peasant
/ˈpɛzənt/ noun, adjective
Forms peasants
- noun A member of the lowly social class that toils on the land, constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, farmhands and other laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture and horticulture.
- noun A country person.
- noun (derogatory) An uncouth, crude or ill-bred person.
- noun (strategy games) A worker unit.
- adjective (attributive) Characteristic of or relating to a peasant or peasants; unsophisticated. “peasant class”
- adjective (obsolete, derogatory) Lowly, vulgar; reprehensible; dishonest.
Synonyms
peon serf churl rustic villager boor bogger bogtrotter bucolic bydlo culchie carl corncob cornhusker country bumpkin country cousin clodhopper dubbo joskin hayseed provincial barbarian Goth tyke tike
Etymology
From Late Middle English paissaunt, from Anglo-Norman paisant, from Old French païsant, païsan (“countryman, peasant”), from païs (“country”), from Latin pāgus (“countryside”) + Old French -enc (“member of”), from Frankish -inc, -ing "-ing"; which was an alteration of earlier Late Latin pāgēnsis (“inhabitant of a district”). Doublet of paisano.
Via Latin pāgus cognate with pagan (compare typologically, see there for more).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A countryman; a rustic; especially, one of the lowest class of tillers of the soil in European countries.
- adjective Rustic, rural. Spenser.
Etymology [OF. païsant (the i being perh. due to confusion with the p.pr. of verbs), païsan, F. paysan, fr. OF. & F. pays country, fr. L. pagus the country. See Pagan.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “peasant”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details