farmer
Pluralfarmers
- 1A person who works the land or raises livestock, especially as their occupation.
The farmer rotated his crops each year to keep the soil healthy.
Dairy farmers in the region rise before dawn to milk their herds.
Similargrower, agriculturalist, producer, cultivator
Note
Behind the everyday word lies a history of leases and levies. Middle English fermour meant a steward, bailiff or tax collector, from Medieval Latin firmarius, 'one to whom land is rented', from firma. In its modern form the word is simply farm + -er, and it covers anyone who works land or livestock, owner and hired hand alike. A stricter British use narrows it to the owner alone.
- 2The owner of a farm, as distinct from a hired farmworker or farmhand employed there.
The farmer holds the title to the land, while the farmhands draw a weekly wage.
Local farmers, not their labourers, attend the agricultural society's meetings.
Similarlandowner, proprietor, landholder
Note
A narrower, stricter use, heard especially in British English. Here the farmer is the person who owns the farm, and the people paid to work it are farmworkers or farmhands. In careful writing the two are not interchangeable, whereas the everyday sense happily covers both. When the difference matters, as with wages, land or membership, name the hired worker as a farmhand and keep farmer for the owner.
- 3A person who took on the collection of taxes, customs, or excise, keeping a fixed percentage of the amount gathered.
The farmer paid the crown a lump sum, then collected far more from the province in taxes.
Royal farmers leased the right to gather customs duties at the busy ports.
Note
A historical figure whose title keeps the Middle English sense of the word, traced at the everyday farming sense. It usually takes an of-phrase naming what was farmed: a farmer of the revenues, of the customs, of the excise. The arrangement was a commercial bargain rather than an office. Use it when writing about past systems of collecting duties, where it reads as history rather than agriculture.
- 4An ordinary person; specifically, someone who did not receive a prestigious scholarship.
Among the funded students, anyone paying full tuition got called a farmer.
She shrugged off the label, proud to be a farmer among all the scholarship kids.
Oppositescholar
Note
Singapore slang that sorts people by a single measure: whether they won a prestigious scholarship. Everyone who did not is a farmer, a regular person rather than a scholar. The word belongs to casual talk in Singapore. Elsewhere, listeners will hear only the agricultural meaning, so keep it to company that already shares the usage.
- 5The lord of the field; one who leased from the crown the right to collect the lot and cope, dues levied on mined ore.
The farmer leased the crown's mining dues and collected them from every pit in the valley.
Local farmers grew wealthy on the lot and cope owed by the lead miners.
Note
Mining gave the tax-farming idea of the revenue collector's sense its own ground. Here the dues were the lot and cope owed to the crown on ore, and the farmer held the right to gather them. The alternative title, lord of the field, frames the role as one of lordship over the workings rather than labor in them. Both terms belong to historical writing about mining.
Less common meaning
- 6A person who, for payment, took in infants and young children to raise, typically running a rural home for unwanted babies.
The farmer received a monthly payment for each child left in her care.
Several farmers in the county advertised in newspapers, offering to raise unwanted infants.
Note
A clipped form of baby farmer, and the clipping only works when the surrounding talk already makes the infants plain. On its own, farmer will be read in the agricultural sense. The word is dated and turns up in older writing about the trade of taking in children for pay. In modern prose, the full compound baby farmer is the clearer choice.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English fermour ("a steward, bailiff, tax collector"), from Old French fermier, from Medieval Latin firmarius ("one to whom land is rented, a tax collector"), from firma; it is equivalent to farm plus -er. Compare Old English feormere ("a supplier of food, a grocer, farmer").