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A cottage is, typically, a small house. The word comes from England where it originally was a house that has a ground floor, with a first, lower storey of bedrooms which fit within the roofspace. In many places the word cottage is used to mean a small old-fashioned house. In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cosy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. In the United Kingdom the term cottage denotes a small dwelling of traditional build, although it can also be applied to dwellings of modern construction which are designed to resemble traditional ones ("mock cottages"). In the United States the word cottage is often used to mean a small holiday home. However, there are cottage-style dwellings in cities that were built primarily for the purpose of housing slaves, and in places such as Canada the term generally exists with no connotations of size at all (cf. vicarage or hermitage). In certain countries (e.g. Scandinavia, Baltics, and Russia) the term "cottage" has local synonyms: In Finnish ''mökki''; in Estonian ''suvila''; in Swedish ''stuga''; in Norwegian ''hytte'' (from the German word ''Hütte''); in Dutch ''keuterij''; in Slovak ''chalupa''; in Russian ''дача'' (''dacha''; which can refer to a vacation/summer home, often located near a body of water). In the USA this type of summer home is more commonly called a "cabin", "chalet", or even "camp". ==History== Originally in the Middle Ages, cottages housed agricultural workers and their friends and families. The term ''cottage'' denoted the dwelling of a cotter. Thus, cottages were smaller peasant units (larger peasant units being called ''messuages''). In that early period, a documentary reference to a cottage would most often mean, not a small stand-alone dwelling as today, but a complete farmhouse and yard (albeit a small one). Thus, in the Middle Ages, the word ''cottage'' (MLat ''cotagium'') denoted not just a dwelling, but included at least a dwelling (''domus'') and a barn (''grangia''), as well as, usually, a fenced yard or piece of land enclosed by a gate (''portum''). The word is probably a blend of Old English ''cot, cote'' "hut" and Old French ''cot'' "hut, cottage", from Old Norse ''kot'' "hut" and related to Middle Low German ''kotten'' (cottage, hut) . Examples of this may be found in 15th century manor court rolls. The house of the cottage bore the Latin name: "''domum''",〔as in ''domum dicti cotagii'' "the house of the said cottage"〕 while the barn of the cottage was termed "''grangia''". Later on, "cottage" might also have denoted a smallholding comprising houses, outbuildings, and supporting farmland or woods. A cottage, in this sense, would typically include just a few acres of tilled land. Examples of this type included the Welsh ''Tŷ unnos'' or "house in a night", built by squatters on a plot of land defined by the throw of an axe from each corner of the property. Much later, from around the 18th century onwards, the development of industry led to the development of weavers' cottages and miners' cottages. In England and Wales the legal definition of a cottage is a small house or habitation without land.〔 〕 However, originally under an Elizabethan statute, the cottage had to be built with at least of land.〔 Traditionally the owner of the cottage and small holding would be known as a cottager. In the Domesday Book they were referred to as ''Coterelli''.〔 In Welsh a cottage is known as ''bwthyn'' and its inhabitant ''preswlydd''.〔 p. 136 and p.178〕 In Scotland and parts of Northern England the equivalent to cottager would be the crofter and the term for the building and its land would be croft. Over the years various Acts of Parliament removed the right of the cottager to hold land. According to the Hammonds in their book ''The Village Labourer'', before the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer with land, and after the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer without land. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「cottage」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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