cottager

From cottage (“small hut; public lavatory”) +‎ -er; compare cotter.

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cottager (plural cottagers)

1. A person who has the tenure of a cottage, usually also the occupant.

   Synonyms: cotter, cottier, coscet

   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. , volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:

     The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love.

   • 1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems:

     A cottager, I mark’d a throne
     Of half the world as all my own,
     And murmur’d at such lowly lot —

   • 1854 September – 1855 January, [Elizabeth Gaskell], North and South. , volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Chapman and Hall, , published 1855, →OCLC:

     I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.

2. (British, slang) One who engages in sex in public lavatories; a practitioner of cottaging.

• Eric Partridge (2005) “cottager”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A–I), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 486.