cottage
Americannoun
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a small house, usually of only one story.
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a small, modest house at a lake, mountain resort, etc., owned or rented as a vacation home.
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one of a group of small, separate houses, as for patients at a hospital, guests at a hotel, or students at a boarding school.
noun
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a small simple house, esp in a rural area
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a small house in the country or at a resort, used for holiday purposes
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one of several housing units, as at a hospital, for accommodating people in groups
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slang a public lavatory
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of cottage
1350–1400; Middle English cotage. See cot 2, -age; compare Medieval Latin cotagium, apparently < Anglo-French
Explanation
A cottage is a small house, particularly a traditional or old-fashioned house, or one that is used seasonally. Your family might rent a cottage near the beach every summer. In the US, a cottage typically has only one story, while in Canada a house can be much larger and still be called a cottage. In the Middle Ages, a cottage was housing for farm workers — sometimes known as cottagers — and the word implied not just a home, but also a barn and land. The first US holiday cottages were built in the 1880s in Bar Harbor, Maine and are credited with introducing the word cottage to North America.
Vocabulary lists containing cottage
There's No Word Like Home
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"A Village After Dark" by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Travel
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Would you be better off in, say, a smaller cottage or apartment, if you are living primarily off Social Security?
From MarketWatch • Jun. 22, 2026
The Carney homestead, located in the townland of Ayle, was a standard rural dwelling of the time: a thatched cottage with two windows in the front.
From BBC • Jun. 14, 2026
In China, a cottage industry has sprung up to ensure the shadow fleet stays operational and delivers its oil to refineries.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
He lived in an isolated rural cottage with no internet and phone signal.
From BBC • May 26, 2026
Clare looked beyond Gingersnipes, into the cottage, which was as he’d left it —cozy and inviting as ever.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
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.
