cottar

noun

cot·tar ˈkä-tər

variants or cotter

Synonyms of cottar next

: a peasant or farm laborer who occupies a cottage and sometimes a small holding of land usually in return for services

Examples of cottar in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

In 1846 and 1847, potatoes, the subsistence crop of the cottar subtenants who composed nearly half the population on some Hebridean estates, failed almost entirely. —

Hugh Raffles, The New York Review of Books, 9 Oct. 2020

Word History

Etymology

Middle English coter, cotyer "peasant residing on a smallholding and owing labor service or payment to a lord," borrowed from Anglo-French cotere, cotier, borrowed from or formed parallel to Medieval Latin cotārius, from Old English (or early Middle English) cot "dwelling of a rural laborer" + Anglo-French -ere, -ier -er entry 2 or Latin -ārius -ary entry 1 — more at cot entry 1

Note: The status of such a peasant—whether free or bound to the land—is not entirely clear. The cotsetla of Anglo-Saxon law was apparently free (see entry in Dictionary of Old English), but his successor in the Domesday Book, the cotārius, was apparently not (see www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm). That the incidence of cotārius/cot(i)er in northern France has been dependent on influence from Germanic speech is demonstrated by Kurt Baldinger in "L'importance de la langue des documents pour l'historie du vocabulaire galloroman (le champ onomasiologique du roturier)," Revue de linguistique romane, tome 26 (1962), pp. 324-25. For the period that England and Normandy were under linked administration, and some time thereafter, cotārius/cot(i)er was in common use in both areas, though the term becomes obsolescent in Normandy by the fourteenth century. Under influence of the Low Countries it reemerges between the Somme valley and the Romance-Germanic linguistic boundary in Flanders in the fourteenth century, continuing through the sixteenth. As a description of a person holding land in a specific way cottar, also cotter ("tenant occupying a cottage with or without attached land") continued in use in Scotland into the nineteenth century, with an Irish variant cottier.

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler

The first known use of cottar was in the 14th century

See more words from the same century

Cite this Entry

Style

“Cottar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cottar. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.

Copy Citation

Kids Definition

cottar

noun

cot·tar

variants or cotter

ˈkät-ər

: a peasant or farm laborer occupying a cottage usually in return for services

Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the Day

paroxysm

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

cottar

noun

Examples of cottar in a Sentence

Word History

Dictionary Entries Near cottar

Cite this Entry

Kids Definition