Peasantry Meaning
/ˈpɛzəntɹi/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounImpoverished rural farm workers, either as serfs, small freeholders or hired hands.
nounIgnorant people of the lowest social status; bumpkins, rustics.
Sentence Examples
The tax bore hard on the peasantry.
The peasantry revolted wielding pitchforks and clubs.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The harsh winter caused great suffering among the local ____ who relied on crops.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The revolution was driven largely by the ____, who had suffered under oppressive taxation for generations.
Word Origin & History
From peasant + -ry, from Middle English paissaunt.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"They distressed her. They were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to poverty. They were peasants, she groaned."
— 1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 3, in Main Street:
"Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the gray-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity."
— 1885, George Eliot, chapter 1, in Silas Marner:
"How much low pezantry would then be gleaned / From the true ſeede of honor? And how much honor, / Pickt from the chaffe and ruine of the times / To be new verniſh’d?"
— c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ix]:
"He ſhall be armed at all peeces from the mid-thigh vpward with a faire Sword by his ſide, and his Captaines Colours or Enſigne in his hand, which Colours if they belong to a priuate Captaine ought to bee mixt equally of two ſeuerall colours, that is to ſay (according to the rules of Herauldry) of Colour and Mettall, and not colour on colour, as Greene and Red, or Blacke and Blew, or ſuch like, nor yet mettall on mettall as White and Yellow, or Orangetawny and White: for colours ſo borne, ſhew Baſtardy, peaſantry, or diſhonor."
— 1622, Francis Markham, “The Office of the Ensigne”, in Fiue Decades of Epistles of VVarre, London: […] Augustine Matthewes, page 74:
"Whoever would appear at the Diet, muſt previouſly become a country-man, or aſſume the peaſantry, and alſo ſue for it with the laudable Land-ſtates and obtain it at the Land-diet."
— 1762, A[nton] F[riedrich] Busching, “The Dutchy of Carniola”, in [Patrick Murdoch], transl., A New System of Geography: In Which Is Given, a General Account of the Situation and Limits, the Manners, History, and Constitution, of the Several Kingdoms and States in the Known World; […], volumes IV (Containing, Part of Germany, viz. Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, Austria, Burgundy, Westphalia, and the Circle of the Rhine), London: […] A[ndrew] Millar […], →OCLC, § 5, page 208:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The harsh winter caused great suffering among the local ____ who relied on crops.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The revolution was driven largely by the ____, who had suffered under oppressive taxation for generations.