Peasant
nounA person of low social rank who works on the land, especially a small farmer or agricultural labourer in earlier or traditional societies.
How to spell peasant
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce peasant
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does peasant mean?
- nounA person of low social rank who works on the land, especially a small farmer or agricultural labourer in earlier or traditional societies.
Peasant in a sentence
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The museum exhibit recreated the cramped cottage of a medieval peasant.
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Each peasant paid a share of the harvest to the local landlord.
Where does peasant come from?
Language of origin: French
The word arrived in English in the 1400s from the Old French paisant (also spelled paysant), meaning a person who lives in and works the countryside. That French noun was built on pais, meaning 'country' or 'rural district', which descended from the Latin pagus, the term for a rural district or country village. The same pagus root sits behind the word 'pagan', because country dwellers were the last to convert to Christianity, so 'pagan' originally just meant 'villager'. The unstressed first syllable is the spelling trap: the 'ea' is sounded like a short 'e', tempting writers toward 'pe-' or 'pez-', yet the inherited French 'ea' spelling has held firm. Over time the meaning narrowed to a small farmer or rural labourer of low social rank, the sense it still carries today.
How the word is built
- peasant- (from Old French paisant: a country dweller, ultimately from pais 'country')
- -ant (noun suffix denoting a person)
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