peasantry

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Impoverished rural farm workers, either as serfs, small freeholders or hired hands.

2. 2

   Ignorant people of the lowest social status

   Ignorant people of the lowest social status; bumpkins, rustics.

   • 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.
3. 3

   The condition of being a peasant

   The condition of being a peasant; the position, rank, conduct, or quality of a peasant.

   • 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?
   • 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.

The neighborhood