Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of cottarIn 1846 and 1847, potatoes, the subsistence crop of the cottar subtenants who composed nearly half the population on some Hebridean estates, failed almost entirely.—Hugh Raffles, The New York Review of Books, 9 Oct. 2020
In those intervening 35 years, China had moved 800 million rural peasants — living in extreme poverty on US$2 a day — into city apartments and integrated them into the global economy.
—
Peter Leyden,
Big Think,
7 Oct. 2025
More than two million peasant families were given land.
Not only does the peon and con man Tom end up refashioning himself as the rich and carefree Dickie, but Highsmith’s novel itself was a retelling of Henry James’s The Ambassadors.
—
Hillary Kelly,
The Atlantic,
19 Apr. 2024
Not afraid but brave, not weak but empowered, not peons but partners.
Share