metayer

plural metayers

1. French and Italian agricultureOne who cultivates land for a share (usually half) of its yield, receiving stock, tools, and seed from the landlord.

   The metayer furnishes his labour, his ignorance, and his good appetite; the proprietor supplying an exhausted soil[…]

   1829, The Foreign Quarterly Review, volume 4

   2 more examples

   A majority of the properties are so small as not to afford a subsistence to the proprietors, of whom, according to some computations, as many as three millions are obliged to eke out their means of support either by working for hire, or by taking additional land, generally on metayer tenure.

   1848, John Stuart Mill, “Continuation of the Same Subject [Of Peasant Proprietors]”, in Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. […], volume I, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], →OCLC, book II (Distribution), § 4, page 338

   A "submerged tenth" of croppers, with a few paupers; forty per cent who are metayers and thirty-nine per cent of semi-metayers and wage-laborers

   1903 June 1, W[illiam] E[dward] Burghardt Du Bois, “Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece”, in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, 2nd edition, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., →OCLC, page 156

plural Metayers

1. A surname.