cottage industry
noun
1
: an industry whose labor force consists of family units or individuals working at home with their own equipment
2
: a small and often informally organized industry
3
: a limited but enthusiastically pursued activity or subject
… this debate about sex and law became a cottage industry for feminist academics …—
Wendy Kaminer
Wendy KaminerExamples of cottage industry in a Sentence
weaving, pottery, and other cottage industries
Recent Examples on the Web
Over the years, a cottage industry of businesses have offered services that have included coaching clients on how to lie about their length of stay or how to conceal their pregnancies from immigration authorities.
—Juliana Kim, NPR, 29 Mar. 2026
By 2020, as Rowling’s trajectory became inescapable, the Sacred Text podcast broke from the pack of Potter-adjacent cottage industries to take a stand.
—Séamas O'Reilly, Vulture, 26 Mar. 2026
Over the past month, major Chinese cloud providers debuted their own version of OpenClaw, local governments dangled grants to startups that build OpenClaw apps, and a cottage industry sprung up helping users install the open-source framework.
—Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, 14 Mar. 2026
With the Epstein story approaching the 10-year mark as a global preoccupation, this nth phase of the intrigue, largely prompted by fallout from the Department of Justice’s July proclamation that there were no further criminal charges in the works, has spawned a potent cottage industry.
—Dan Adler, Vanity Fair, 14 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for cottage industry
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Juliana Kim, NPR, 29 Mar. 2026
By 2020, as Rowling’s trajectory became inescapable, the Sacred Text podcast broke from the pack of Potter-adjacent cottage industries to take a stand.
—Séamas O'Reilly, Vulture, 26 Mar. 2026
Over the past month, major Chinese cloud providers debuted their own version of OpenClaw, local governments dangled grants to startups that build OpenClaw apps, and a cottage industry sprung up helping users install the open-source framework.
—Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, 14 Mar. 2026
With the Epstein story approaching the 10-year mark as a global preoccupation, this nth phase of the intrigue, largely prompted by fallout from the Department of Justice’s July proclamation that there were no further criminal charges in the works, has spawned a potent cottage industry.
—Dan Adler, Vanity Fair, 14 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for cottage industry
Cite this Entry
“Cottage industry.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cottage%20industry. Accessed 5 Apr. 2026.
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