a person who farms; person who operates a farm or cultivates land.
Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. an unsophisticated or ignorant person, especially one from a rural area.
Archaic. a person who undertakes some service, as the care of children or poor people, at a fixed price.
Archaic. a person who undertakes the collection of taxes, duties, etc., paying a fixed sum for the privilege of retaining them.
Cards.
a variety of twenty-one played with a 45-card pack, the object being to obtain cards having a total worth of 16.
the dealer in this game.
Fannie (Merritt) 1857–1915, U.S. authority on cooking.
James (Leonard), 1920–1999, U.S. civil rights leader; founder of CORE.
a person who operates or manages a farm
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
a person who looks after a child for a fixed sum
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.”
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
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."
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“She holds a grudge like nobody’s business,” David Farmer, the Maine Democratic strategist and columnist, told me.
From Slate • Jun. 16, 2026
Asked about the bighorn death, Becky Farmer, a spokesperson for the U.S.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 3, 2026
Farmer Issa al-Moussa walks among his damaged wheat crop in eastern Syria after the nearby Euphrates River flooded in recent days due to heavy rainfall and increased flows from Turkey.
From Barron's • Jun. 2, 2026
Farmer Dave Bell, chair of the Voluntary Initiative for the use of Plant Protection, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he relies on herbicides like glyphosate.
From BBC • May 6, 2026
Early in 2000, I tagged along with Farmer on what he called “a light month for travel.”
From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
