Definition of peasant
1 : a member of a European class of persons tilling the soil as small landowners or as laborers This land was farmed by peasants for centuriess.; also : a member of a similar class elsewhere
2 : a usually uneducated person of low social status They treated us like a bunch of peasants.
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Examples of peasant in a Sentence
They treated us like a bunch of peasants.
Recent Examples of peasant from the Web
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Those are the words of a king who is being challenged by a peasant.
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The group, which began as a peasant army in the 1950s, morphed into a hardened fighting force that relied on kidnapping, extortion and narco-trafficking to finance its war.
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The film, set in Congo, follows a young peasant who dreams of a better future for his loved ones.
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Travelers in the Ottoman era used to describe the shocking gulf between Aleppo’s opulence and the countryside surrounding it, where peasants lived in almost Stone Age conditions.
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But look a little closer, and Rivera’s stolid and statuesque rural peasants, industrial workers and revolutionary fighters don’t really have much character.
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The frescoes show peasants harvesting land and bringing food, suggesting Akhethotep was a high civil servant, close to the king.
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Hegedušic´ was an old man, very famous for his genre paintings of peasants and strongly delineated landscapes of fields of crops—kind of a Yugoslav Thomas Hart Benton.
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Dutch speakers, now a majority of 60 percent, were considered peasants by the French speakers, who found their potato stew culture nearly barbaric.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'peasant'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Origin and Etymology of peasant
Middle English paissaunt, from Anglo-French paisant, pesaunt, from pais, paiis country, from Late Latin pagensis inhabitant of a district, from Latin pagus district; akin to Latin pangere to fix — more at pact
PEASANT Defined for English Language Learners
peasant
playDefinition of peasant for English Language Learners
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: a poor farmer or farm worker who has low social status
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: a person who is not educated and has low social status
PEASANT Defined for Kids
peasant
playDefinition of peasant for Students
: a farmer or farm worker of low social class
Learn More about peasant
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See words that rhyme with peasant Spanish Central: Translation of peasant Nglish: Translation of peasant for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of peasant for Arabic speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about peasant
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