cottage

A thatched cottage in Herefordshire, United Kingdom.

A public toilet in London, United Kingdom.

Late Middle English, from Anglo-Norman cotage and Medieval Latin cotagium, from Old Northern French cot, cote (“hut, cottage”) + -age (“surrounding property”), from Proto-Germanic *kutan, *kuta- (“shed”), probably of non-Indo-European origin, possibly borrowed from Uralic; compare Finnish kota (“hut, house”) and Hungarian ház (“house”), both from Proto-Finno-Ugric/Proto-Uralic *kota. However, also compare Dutch and English hut.^[1][2]

Old Northern French cote is probably from Old Norse kot (“hut”), cognate of Old English cot of same Proto-Germanic origin.

Slang sense “public toilet” from 19th century, due to resemblance.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒtɪd͡ʒ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑtɪd͡ʒ/, [ˈkɑɾɪd͡ʒ]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

  • (weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑtəd͡ʒ/, [ˈkɑɾəd͡ʒ]
• Hyphenation: cot‧tage
• Rhymes: -ɒtɪdʒ

cottage (plural cottages)

1. A small house.

   Synonyms: cot, hut

2. A seasonal home of any size or stature, a recreational home or a home in a remote location.

   Most cottages in the area were larger and more elaborate than my home.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Thinks I to myself, “Sol, you're run off your course again. This is a rich man's summer ‘cottage’ and if you don't look out there's likely to be some nice, lively dog taking an interest in your underpinning.”

3. (UK, slang, archaic) A public lavatory.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:bathroom

4. (Polari) A meeting place for homosexual men.

   Synonyms: gingerbread office, tea room, tearoom, teahouse, (US) tea house

• cosset
• cot
• coterie

• → French: cottage

cottage (third-person singular simple present cottages, present participle cottaging, simple past and past participle cottaged)

1. To stay at a seasonal home, to go cottaging.
2. (intransitive, Polari, of men) To have homosexual sex in a public lavatory; to practice cottaging.

• cottage on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Eric Partridge (2005) “cottage”, 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.

Borrowed from English cottage.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.taʒ/

cottage m (plural cottages)

1. cottage

• “cottage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

cottage m (uncountable)

1. cottage cheese (a cheese curd product)