cottager

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒtɪd͡ʒə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑtɪd͡ʒɚ/

• Audio (General Australian):

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From cottage (“small hut”) +‎ -er (demonym suffix);^[1] compare cotter.

cottager (plural cottagers)

1. A person who has the tenure of a cottage, usually also the occupant.

   Synonyms: cotter, cottier, coscet

   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter III, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume II, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 48:

     The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager, won my reverence; while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love.

   • 1827, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Tamerlane and Other Poems:

     A cottager, I mark’d a throne
     Of half the world as all my own,
     And murmur’d at such lowly lot!

   • 1854 September – 1855 January, [Elizabeth Gaskell], “Roses and Thorns”, in North and South. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1855, →OCLC, page 23:

     I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.

From cottage (“to have sex in a public lavatory”) +‎ -er (agent noun suffix).

cottager (plural cottagers)

1. (British, slang) One who engages in sex in public lavatories; a practitioner of cottaging.

• Eric Partridge (2005) “cottager”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A–I), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 486.