Cottage: A Small House With a Long History
A cottage is a small, usually old house in the country. The word once named the dwelling of a cottar, a peasant who held a plot in return for labour.
A cottage is a small house, traditionally rural and often old. The modern picture of roses and thatch hides an unromantic origin: a cottage was the house of a cottar, the lowest rank of tenant, who held a scrap of land in exchange for work.
- A small country house. *A stone cottage on the hill.*
- A holiday house. *They rented a cottage by the sea.*
- A summer house (North American). *The family cottage on the lake.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | cottage | A thatched cottage. |
| Person | cottager | A cottager's plot. |
| Compound | cottage garden | A traditional cottage garden. |
| Compound | cottage industry | A cottage industry in wool. |
| Compound | cottage pie | Cottage pie for supper. |
How it is used in a sentence
- They bought a run-down cottage in Devon.The usual British sense.
- Software began as a cottage industry.Small-scale production done at home.
- Cottage pie uses beef; shepherd's pie uses lamb.A distinction many people get wrong.
Cottage compounds
- Cottage garden — informal planting of flowers, herbs and vegetables together
- Cottage industry — work done in homes rather than factories
- Cottage cheese — soft fresh cheese once made at home from leftover milk
- Cottage pie — minced beef under mashed potato
- Cottage hospital — a small rural hospital, a British institution
From Anglo-French *cotage*, from *cot*, a hut, with a suffix marking a holding. The romantic sense arrived in the eighteenth century, when wealthier people began building small rural retreats and borrowed the word for them.
Cottage pie or shepherd's pie?
Cottage pie is made with beef, shepherd's pie with lamb. The shepherd looks after sheep, which is the memory hook.
Does cottage mean holiday home in Canada?
Often yes. In Ontario a cottage is a lakeside summer house; other regions say camp or cabin.