| 释义 |
cottier|ˈkɒtɪə(r)|
Forms: 4–5 cotier, cotyer, 6 cottyer, 7– cottier.
[a. OF. cotier, cottier = med.L. cotārius, coterius, f. cota cot.]
1. A peasant who lives in a cot or cottage; a cottager; orig. a villein who occupied a cottage; a ‘cotset’, ‘cottar’ or ‘coterell’.
1386in Madox Formul. Angl. 428 (Du Cange) Omnibus tenentibus meis, videlicet Husbandis, Cotiers & Bond. 1393Langl. P. Pl. C. x. 97 Almes..to comfortie suche cotyers [i.e. women þat wonyeþ in Cotes] and crokede men and blynde. Ibid. 193 These lolleres, lacchedraweres, lewede eremytes, Coueyten þe contrarie as cotiers þei lybben. 1599Bp. Hall Sat. iv. ii. 9 Himself goes patched like some bare cottyer. 1603Holland Plutarch's Mor. 200 [He] asked for bread and water; which the said peasant or cottier gave unto him. 1649W. Blithe Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653) 77, I begin with..the Poor Cottier, or day Labourer. 1821M. Edgeworth Mem. R.L. Edgeworth II. 24 They had cottiers, day labourers established in cottages, on their estate. 1861Pearson Early & Mid. Ages 268 The largest class of all was the semi-servile. Of these villeins, borders, or cottiers, make up the mass, about 200,000 in all. 1868Milman St. Paul's 136 Every one, from the lord to the cottier, had his customary claims.
2. spec. In Ireland, a peasant renting and cultivating a small holding under a system hence called cottier tenure.
The main feature of this system was the letting of the land annually in small portions directly to labourers, the rent being fixed not by private agreement but by public competition; recent legal and political changes have rendered this practice obsolete.
1832H. Martineau Ireland i. 6 An Irish cottier finds his business finished when he has dug and planted his potato field. 1842S. C. Hall Ireland II. 120 Some landlords in Munster set their lands to cottiers far above their value. 1868Mill Eng. & Ireland, He was a cottier, at a nominal rent, puffed up by competition to a height far above what could, even under the most favourable circumstances, be paid.
3. transf. A small farmer cultivating his parcel of land by his own labour.
1877D. M. Wallace Russia xxix. 460 These peasants proper, who may be roughly described as small farmers or cottiers, were distinguished from the free agricultural laborers in two respects: they were possessors of land in property or usufruct, and they were members of a rural Commune.
4. attrib. (chiefly in sense 2), as cottier farmer, cottier rent, cottier tenant, cottier tenure, etc.; cottier tenancy, the tenancy of the Irish cottier; by an Act of Parliament of 1860 defined as tenancy of a cottage and not more than half an acre of land, at a rent not exceeding {pstlg}5 a year.
1831R. Jones Ess. Distrib. Wealth, The disadvantage of cottier-rents. 1848Mill Pol. Econ. ii. ix. §1 By the general appellation of Cottier tenure, I shall designate all cases, without exception, in which the labourer makes his contract for land without the intervention of a capitalist farmer. 1861May Const. Hist. (1863) II. xiv. 475 In Ireland..the tithes..were levied upon vast numbers of cottier tenants, miserably poor, and generally Catholics. 1863Fawcett Pol. Econ. ii. vii. (1876) 214 In the case of a cottier-tenancy, it is population, and not capital, which competes for the land.
Hence ˈcottierism, the system of cottier-tenure (see 2).
1848Mill Pol. Econ. ii. x. §2 The old vicious system of cottierism. |