Cottage


[kot-ij] /ˈkɒt ɪdʒ/

noun
1.
a small house, usually of only one story.
2.
a small, modest house at a lake, mountain resort, etc., owned or rented as a vacation home.
3.
one of a group of small, separate houses, as for patients at a hospital, guests at a hotel, or students at a boarding school.
/ˈkɒtɪdʒ/
noun
1.
a small simple house, esp in a rural area
2.
(US & Canadian) a small house in the country or at a resort, used for holiday purposes
3.
(US) one of several housing units, as at a hospital, for accommodating people in groups
4.
(slang) a public lavatory
n.

late 13c., from Old French cote “hut, cottage” + Anglo-French suffix -age (probably denoting “the entire property attached to a cote”). Old French cot is probably from Old Norse kot “hut,” cognate of Old English cot, cote “cottage, hut,” from Proto-Germanic *kutan (cf. Middle Dutch cot, Dutch kot).

Meaning “small country residence” (without suggestion of poverty or tenancy) is from 1765. Modern French cottage is a 19c. reborrowing from English. Cottage industry is attested from 1921. Cottage cheese is attested from 1831, American English, earliest in reference to Philadelphia:

There was a plate of rye-bread, and a plate of wheat, and a basket of crackers; another plate with half a dozen paltry cakes that looked as if they had been bought under the old Court House; some morsels of dried beef on two little tea-cup plates: and a small glass dish of that preparation of curds, which in vulgar language is called smear-case, but whose nom de guerre is cottage-cheese, at least that was the appellation given it by our hostess. [“Miss Leslie,” “Country Lodgings,” Godey’s “Lady’s Book,” July 1831]

(1.) A booth in a vineyard (Isa. 1:8); a temporary shed covered with leaves or straw to shelter the watchman that kept the garden. These were slight fabrics, and were removed when no longer needed, or were left to be blown down in winter (Job 27:18). (2.) A lodging-place (rendered “lodge” in Isa. 1:8); a slighter structure than the “booth,” as the cucumber patch is more temporary than a vineyard (Isa. 24:20). It denotes a frail structure of boughs supported on a few poles, which is still in use in the East, or a hammock suspended between trees, in which the watchman was accustomed to sleep during summer. (3.) In Zeph. 2:6 it is the rendering of the Hebrew _keroth_, which some suppose to denote rather “pits” (R.V. marg., “caves”) or “wells of water,” such as shepherds would sink.

Read Also:

  • Cottage-cheese

    noun 1. an extremely soft, or loose, white, mild-flavored cheese made from skim-milk curds, usually without rennet. noun 1. a mild loose soft white cheese made from skimmed milk curds noun See curds and whey

  • Cottage cheese thighs

    noun phrase Fat thighs; thunder thighs: In Los Angeles, cottage cheese thighs are nothing to snicker about (1990s+)

  • Cottage country

    noun 1. (Canadian) any lakeside region where many country cottages are located

  • Cottage flat

    noun 1. (Brit) any of the flats in a two-storey house that is divided into four flats, two on each floor

  • Cottage-fries

    plural noun 1. Chiefly Northern and North Midland U.S. .


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