: a peasant or farm laborer who occupies a cottage and sometimes a small holding of land usually in return for services.

(Entry 1 of 2) 1 : cotter entry 1 sense 2. 2 : a tenant in Ireland formerly renting a small farm under the rack-rent system, the land being let to the highest bidder. 3 : a peasant farmer.

These were movements of the rural poor; waged labourers, those who worked in the ‘Big House’ or on the ‘Estate’ and cottiers (small tenant farmers). Labourers would often rent (or be allowed to rent land as part of their wage), while the smallest tenant farmers would supplement their income with labouring.

A cotter is a pin or wedge passing through a hole to fix parts tightly together. In British usage cotter pin has the same meaning, but in the U.S. it refers to a split pin. Typical applications are in fixing a crank to its crankshaft, as in a bicycle, or a piston rod to a crosshead, as in a steam engine.

One definition of cottier in Ireland (c. 1700–1850) was a person who rented a simple cabin and between one and one and a half acres of land upon which to grow potatoes, oats, and possibly flax. After the Famine, the cottier class almost completely disappeared.

1847
The worst year of the period was 1847, known as “Black ’47″….Great Famine (Ireland)

The most prevalent meaning of the term ‘cottier’ is that of a. labourer holding a cabin, either with or without land, as it may. happen (but commonly from a quarter to three acres are. attached), from a farmer or other occupier, for whom he is. bound to work, either constantly at a certain fixed price (usually.

Cotter, cottier, cottar, Kosatter or Kötter is the German or Scots term for a peasant farmer (formerly in the Scottish Highlands for example). Cotters occupied cottages and cultivated small land lots.

1 : a free common villager or village peasant of any of the feudal classes lower in rank than the thane. 2 : a free peasant of a feudal class higher in rank than a cotter. 3 : an unfree peasant enslaved to a feudal lord but free in legal relations with respect to all others.

In pre-Famine Ireland, fish was seen as a luxury by those who did not live by the sea. It was eaten with bread or potatoes. When the blight struck the potato crops, people stopped eating fish as well.

You might be asking, why would anyone eat that many potatoes in a day? Because the potato grew easily, even in poor conditions, it soon became the food staple of Irish life. It seemed that the Irish would be able to survive for a time despite the tyrannous burdens placed on them by the British.

Definition of cottier (Entry 1 of 2) 1 : cotter entry 1 sense 2 2 : a tenant in Ireland formerly renting a small farm under the rack-rent system, the land being let to the highest bidder

1 archaic A rural laborer living in a cottage. ‘The tenants, she noted, were a varied group, comprising farmers with large holdings, smallholders and at the bottom of the pile the landless cottiers and labourers, many of whom disappeared without trace in the middle of the 19th century.’

Cottier, one of these, was paid a retaining fee of ten thousand crowns, besides great sums in lands and money. Poor Maurice, whose heart could never stand the slightest wrong done the humblest cottier on his land, how will he bear up now?

(Historical Terms) (in Ireland) a peasant farming a smallholding under cottier tenure (the holding of not more than half an acre at a rent of not more than five pounds a year) 1. Want to thank TFD for its existence?