cottage industry

noun

Updated on: 8 Apr 2018

Definition of cottage industry

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

See cottage industry defined for English-language learners

Examples of cottage industry in a Sentence

weaving, pottery, and other cottage industries

Recent Examples of cottage industry from the Web

The timeshare industry is roiling with new allegations about cottage industries that claim to help people cancel their timeshares.

— paul brinkmann, OrlandoSentinel.com, "Orange Lake, Diamond Resorts sue timeshare cancelation attorney," 4 Apr. 2018
On the left, a thriving cottage industry for social-justice lawsuits uses identity-group quotas to sue employers for disparate impact.

— frederick m. hess and, WSJ, "Degree Inflation and Discrimination," 2 Apr. 2018
Its success has also given way to a cottage industry of businesses that specialize in assembling Ikea furniture.

— abha bhattarai, The Seattle Times, "Ikea has changed the way we think about furniture," 28 Jan. 2018
Outside the professional baseball establishment, there already exists a sort of cottage industry of hitting gurus who tend to focus on reclamation-project hitters.

— nick piecoro, azcentral, "Arizona Diamondbacks hope for an edge with hitting strategist Robert Van Scoyoc," 7 Mar. 2018
The tension between schools and parents has created a cottage industry for lawyers and advocates.

— Anchorage Daily News, "Parkland shooter always in trouble, never expelled. Why didn’t school system do more?," 21 Feb. 2018
In fact, diagnosing conditions in paintings is something of a cottage industry, and some medical schools even offer courses to train students to employ a clinician’s eye to the masterworks.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Earliest Images of Breast Cancer Found in Renaissance Paintings," 2 Mar. 2018
There’s now a cottage industry of people who do startup consulting.

— adam lashinsky, Fortune, "How 'The Lean Startup' Turned Eric Ries Into an Unlikely Corporate Guru," 22 Feb. 2018
The modern organic food business started as a cottage industry of longhairs selling brown rice and tofu out of wooden barrels in small stores.

— joshua clark davis, Slate Magazine, "So Much for “Conscious Capitalism”," 19 June 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cottage industry.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.