Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See cotter.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun In Great Britain and Ireland, a person who hires a small cottage, with or without a plot of land. Cottiers commonly aid in the work of the landlord's farm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of cotter. (one performing labour in exchange for the right to live in a cottage)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a medieval English villein

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old French cotier. See coterie, and compare cotter.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word cottier.

Examples

  • Audio Sample In addition, it offers some alternative motivations: the Irish rebel running from the law; the Irish Catholic fleeing from religious persecution; the Irish cottier escaping the Great Famine.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • The collapse of the potato culture by the 1840s and 1850s led to a decimation of the cottier and laborer class that had relied so heavily on female productive work.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • Subdivision and subletting of land were increasingly undermining the viability of holdings and eventually came under prohibition altogether, leaving few options for surplus offspring in small-holder or cottier families.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • Nonetheless, the population explosion within the cottier and laboring class increased the aggregate dependence on the potato steadily and dramatically after the turn of the nineteenth century.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • Ballywhacket, at the house of a cottier, who gave me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred guineas after, when I came to visit Ireland in my days of greatness.

    The Memoires of Barry Lyndon 2006

  • This fellow, 'he added, standing up at the table, and pointing across it to Matthew -' this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows, that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can flow - proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three-hundred years. '

    Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte 2004

  • These houses, which contrast remarkably with the old structures not yet improved off the face of the island, accommodate half of Sir Maurice Fitzgerald's agricultural tenants, of whom there are about 100 on his part of the island, as well as eighty-eight cottier or labourer tenants, who work for the farmers or at the slate quarry, and have little patches of ground attached to their cabins.

    Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. Bernard H. Becker

  • Mainly with a view to elicit further expression of opinion, I hinted to the last and most accomplished person who put these queries to me, that it would be absurd to give the cottier absolute control over his land, and that he should have a conditional lease from the

    Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. Bernard H. Becker

  • The cottier _pauvre diable_ appears, I apprehend, to the farmers as a labourer, and they therefore look with anything but favour upon a scheme for raising the poor peasants above the necessity of working for them, by giving the poor a real stake in the country.

    Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. Bernard H. Becker

  • At the altar, serf and master, count or cottier, knelt side by side.

    The Truce of God A Tale of the Eleventh Century George Henry Miles

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.