Cottars

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who historically occupied small agricultural holdings with limited rights ; rural dwellers living in modest cottages often with farming duties ; tenants or laborers holding a dwelling and small garden in exchange for work or rent
2. People associated with low-status rural tenancy under feudal or traditional land systems ; village residents occupying simple homes often linked to subsistence agriculture ; persons granted minimal land and dwelling as part of labor service or economic arrangement
3. Rural inhabitants who possess a cottage and small plots under customary tenure ; villagers with constrained property rights related to agricultural labor ; leaseholders or smallholders engaged in manual or agricultural work while residing in modest accommodations

Etymology: "Cottars" is the plural of "cottar", a variant of "cottager" used for the poor rural tenants who held a small cottage and a little land, usually in return for labour on a larger estate. The word belongs to the same family as "cottage" and "cot," the older sense of which was a small dwelling, so the people named by it are defined first by the modest building they lived in rather than by any rank or profession.

Synonyms: cottagers, peasants, tenant farmers, smallholders, serfs

Antonyms: landowners, lords, masters, aristocrats, nobles