Adjacent Words

peasant definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a country person [syn: peasant, provincial, bucolic]
2: one of a (chiefly European) class of agricultural laborers
3: a crude uncouth ill-bred person lacking culture or refinement [syn: peasant, barbarian, boor, churl, Goth, tyke, tike]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English paissaunt, from Anglo-French paisant, pesaunt, from pais, paiis country, from Late Latin pagensis inhabitant of a district, from Latin pagus district; akin to Latin pangere to fix — more at pact Date: 15th century 1. a member of a European class of persons tilling the soil as small landowners or as laborers; also a member of a similar class elsewhere 2. a usually uneducated person of low social status

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 esp. colloq. a countryman or countrywoman; a rustic. 2 a a worker on the land, esp. a labourer or smallholder. b hist. a member of an agricultural class dependent on subsistence farming. 3 derog. a lout; a boorish person. Derivatives: peasantry n. (pl. -ies). peasanty adj. Etymology: ME f. AF paisant, OF pa{iuml}sent, earlier pa{iuml}sence f. pa{iuml}s country ult. f. L pagus canton

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Peasant Peas"ant, n. [OF. pa["i]sant (the i being perh. due to confusion with the p. pr. of verbs), pa["i]san, F. paysan, fr. OF. & F. pays country, fr. L. pagus the country. See Pagan.] A countryman; a rustic; especially, one of the lowest class of tillers of the soil in European countries. Syn: Countryman; rustic; swain; hind.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Peasant Peas"ant, a. Rustic, rural. --Spenser.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(peasants) A peasant is a poor person of low social status who works on the land; used of people who live in countries where farming is still a common way of life. ...the peasants in the Peruvian highlands... N-COUNT: oft supp N, N n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

I. n. Rustic, countryman, hind, swain, clown, laborer. II. a. Rustic, rural.

Moby Thesaurus

Babbitt, Bauer, Philistine, agriculturalist, agriculturist, agrologist, agronomist, arriviste, boor, bounder, bourgeois, bucolic, bumpkin, cad, churl, clod, clodhopper, clown, coffee-planter, collective farm worker, country, country bumpkin, countryman, countrywoman, crofter, cropper, cultivator, dirt farmer, dry farmer, epicier, farm laborer, farmer, farmhand, fellah, galoot, gentleman farmer, granger, groundling, grower, guttersnipe, harvester, harvestman, haymaker, hayseed, hick, hind, hooligan, husbandman, ill-bred fellow, kibbutznik, kolkhoznik, kulak, looby, lout, low fellow, lump, mucker, muzhik, nouveau riche, oaf, parvenu, peasant holder, peon, picker, planter, plowboy, plowman, provincial, raiser, rancher, ranchman, reaper, ribald, rough, roughneck, rowdy, rube, ruffian, rustic, serf, sharecropper, sower, swain, tea-planter, tenant farmer, tiller, tree farmer, truck farmer, upstart, vulgarian, vulgarist, yeoman, yokel