Forms: 6 cottyger, cotiger, coticher, 6–7 cotager, 7– cottager, (6 cotinger, 7 cottinger). [f. COTTAGE + -ER1.] One who lives in a cottage; used esp. of the laboring population in rural districts.
(Johnson’s statement, repeated in later Dicts., ‘A cottager, in law, is one that lives on the common, without paying rent, and without any land of his own,’ is a mere error, app. due to misunderstanding a passage in Bacon.)
1550. Lever, Serm., ii. (Arb.), 82. The poore cotingers … had ye mylke for a very small hyre.
1555. Act 2–3 Phil. & Mary, c. 8 § 2. Every Cottager and Labourer of that Parish.
1590. Vestry Bks. (Surtees), 29. Everie landlorde shall answere for there cotichers for the payment of ij d. in the yeare for bread and wyne.
1622. Bacon, Hen. VII., 74 (J.). The Yeomanrie or Middle-People, of a Condition between Gentlemen, and Cottagers, or Pesants.
1741. Richardson, Pamela, III. 175. Here … the proud Cottager will needs be a Lady, in Hope to conceal her Descent.
1795. Southey, Joan of Arc, V. 93. But little cause to love the mighty ones Hath the low cottager.
1853. Miss Mitford, in L’Estrange, Life, III. xiv. 257. They are living in a hut on the borders of Loch Achray, playing at cottagers, as rich people like to do.
b. As an equivalent of COTTAR 2.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. x. I. 122. There still subsists in many parts of Scotland a set of people called Cotters or Cottagers…. They are a sort of out-servants of the landlords and farmers.
1792. Statist. Acc. Fife, V. 383 (Jam.). Upon the different farms, a cottager, or, as he is commonly called, a cotter, is kept for each plough employed on the farm.
1825–79. Jamieson, Cottown, A small village or hamlet, possessed by cottars or cottagers, dependent on the principal farm.
c. U.S. One who lives in a summer residence or villa of his own at a watering-place, etc.
1882. Nation (N. Y.), 7 Sept., 196/2. The summer season closed last week for the great body of the Boarders at summer resorts. The ‘Cottagers,’ or persons who when they go to the country live in their own houses, will stay nearly three months longer. Ibid. (1883), 9 Aug., 111. An illustration of the conflict between the Boarder and the Cottager at our leading summer resorts, and especially those of the seaside.
d. Cottager’s dance: an old-fashioned kind of country-dance.
1887. Spon’s Househ. Man., Drawingroom, 622. Old Fashioned Dances … Cottager’s:—4 people stand for this as in the quadrille.
