farmer
Pluralfarmers
- 1A person who grows crops or raises animals on a farm.
Like a gardener, but for big fields and farm animals.
The farmer planted corn across all his fields this spring.
Every morning the farmers met at the market to sell vegetables.
Similargrower, agriculturalist, producer, cultivator
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- 2The owner of a farm, not a person paid to work on it.
Like the owner of a shop, not the staff who work there.
The farmer owns three hundred acres and employs six workers.
Unlike the farmhands, the farmer decides which crops to plant each year.
Similarlandowner, proprietor, landholder
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- 3A person who collected taxes or fees and kept part of the money as payment.
Like a person who pays for the right to collect money, then keeps some of it.
The farmer came each year to collect the village's taxes.
Farmers grew rich by keeping a share of every tax they gathered.
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- 4An ordinary person, especially someone who did not win a special scholarship.
Like calling someone a regular guy next to the star students.
He joked that he was just a farmer next to all the scholarship winners.
The farmers in the dorm teased their classmates about the fancy grants.
Oppositescholar
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- 5A person who paid for the right to collect the crown's mining dues.
Like a person who pays the king for the right to collect mining fees, then keeps a cut.
The farmer collected a share of all the lead dug from the hills.
Miners resented paying the farmer for every load of ore.
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Less common meaning
- 6A person who was paid to take in and care for unwanted babies and children.
Like a person paid to look after children who are not their own.
The farmer took in five infants whose mothers could not keep them.
Poor families paid the farmer a weekly sum to raise their babies.
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Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English fermour, meaning a steward or tax collector, which came from Old French and Medieval Latin words linked to firma. It is like farm plus -er.