Meanings
cottier1
plural cottiers
- Someone who lives in a cot or cottage; a cottager.
Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his landlord is not industrious, there are people who think that the Irish are naturally idle.
1870, John Stuart Mill, chapter 1, in The Subjection of Women, 3rd edition, The Modern Library, →ISBN1 more example
[W]hat he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant's barn-door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's.
1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 38, in Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book IV
Cottier2
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
cottier · noun
- Old Frenchcotier
- Englishcottier
From Old French cotier. See coterie, and compare cotter.
More words from Old French
Full word history & related roots →Cottier · proper noun
- FrenchCottier
- EnglishCottier
Borrowed from French Cottier, or a variant of Cotter.
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
cottier. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cottier
“cottier.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cottier. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cottier,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cottier.
Source: cottier on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.