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• farmer
  farmer

  noun

  a person who farms; person who operates a farm or cultivates land.
• Farmer
  Farmer

  noun

  Fannie (Merritt) 1857–1915, U.S. authority on cooking.

farmer

¹ American  

[fahr-mer] / ˈfɑr mər /

noun

• farmers
  plural

1. a person who farms; person who operates a farm or cultivates land.

2. Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. an unsophisticated or ignorant person, especially one from a rural area.

3. Archaic. a person who undertakes some service, as the care of children or poor people, at a fixed price.

4. Archaic. a person who undertakes the collection of taxes, duties, etc., paying a fixed sum for the privilege of retaining them.

5. Cards.

   1. a variety of twenty-one played with a 45-card pack, the object being to obtain cards having a total worth of 16.

   2. the dealer in this game.

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Farmer ² American  

[fahr-mer] / ˈfɑr mər /

noun

1. Fannie (Merritt) 1857–1915, U.S. authority on cooking.

2. James (Leonard), 1920–1999, U.S. civil rights leader; founder of CORE.

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farmer ¹ British  

/ ˈfɑːmə /

noun

1. a person who operates or manages a farm

2. a person who obtains the right to collect and retain a tax, rent, etc, or operate a franchise for a specified period on payment of a fee

3. a person who looks after a child for a fixed sum

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Farmer ² British  

/ ˈfɑːmə /

noun

1. John. ?1565–1605, English madrigal composer and organist

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Sensitive Note

The word farmer has been used as a derogatory term for an ignorant or unsophisticated person, especially one from a rural area (whether an actual farmer or not), since the 1800's. A couple of citations illustrate this. One early example is found in Artie by George Ade (1896): “I may be a farmer, but it takes better people than you to sling the bull con into me,” uttered by the title character Artie, who is a young office worker and not a farmer. A book review in The Guardian (August 21, 2001) shows a more recent use: “I worked in a couple of those bars where you hustle champagne. They were businessmen, they weren't naive farmers.”

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• underfarmer
  noun
• farmerlike
  adjective
• profarmer
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• farmers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of farmer

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English fermer, fermour, from Anglo-French, Old French fermier “collector of revenue,” from Medieval Latin firmārius “one who holds lands or tenement for a fixed number of years or for life”; see origin at farm, -er ²

Explanation

A farmer is a person who runs and works on a farm. Some farmers raise a variety of food crops, while others keep dairy cows and sell their milk. Farmers work in some aspect of agriculture, growing vegetables, grains, or fruit; or raising animals for milk, eggs, or meat. A small farmer manages a relatively small piece of land, often growing different crops and keeping hens for their eggs, for example. Some farmers own their farms, while others rent the land on which they work. In the 14th century, a farmer was "one who collects taxes," from the Old French fermier, "lease holder."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

farmer Farmer farmers

As soybean farmer David Schacht begins his fall harvest, surging diesel and fertilizer costs are fast outpacing his earnings.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026

A year's worth of government grants, more than £250m, was handed out in under six hours in an online scramble "reminiscent of Glastonbury ticket sales", as Wiltshire farmer Tom Collins put it.

From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026

Belly Begum, a 55-year-old farmer, struggles to irrigate her land during frequent power cuts.

From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026

Aidan Struve, a 23-year-old farmer in Woodward, Iowa, operates his family farm that produces corn, soybeans, alfalfa and oats across roughly 500 acres.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026

The farmer gave me his pay for that month—ten dollars—and turned us out of the house.

From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer

Sam Farmer makes his picks and predictions for Week 5 of the NFL season, with the 49ers prevailing over the Seahawks and the Rams beating the Bills.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026

Farmer Preston Arrington, who has a 2,100-acre farm in Mississippi, told MarketWatch on Tuesday that when he bought a truckload of red-dyed diesel for his farming equipment a month ago, he paid $4.12 a gallon.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026

Sam Farmer breaks down what went wrong for the Chargers in their 26-14 season-opening loss to the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026

Nerina Farmer, head of the wills and probate team at Nottingham-based Ringrose Law, also advises caution.

From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026

The evening I met Farmer, I was sitting on a second-story balcony of a military outpost, talking with U.S.

From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French

"Most farmers have been living on a very thin edge of profitability," said Logan, 77, himself a soybean, corn and wheat farmer.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026

"There are farmers really flailing away" and drastically concerned about fuel costs, Joe Logan, interim president of the Ohio Farmers Union, told AFP.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026

Some land in its Monterey estate is rented out to local farmers growing asparagus, corn and other produce, Wente said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

Issues related to farmers were particularly close to his heart.

From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026

They had sheep in Oklahoma and sheep farmers.

From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri

Related Words

• grower
• laborer
• peasant
• producer
• rancher