Other forms: peasants
A peasant is a poor farm worker of the old countryside. A peasant family, peasant farmers, the peasants revolted.
It is a historical and sociological term, and using it of anybody living is an insult. Peasant agriculture still feeds a great deal of the world, and the word covers smallholders working their own land as well as labourers on somebody else's. Note that the French comes from a word for the country.
1nounpeasantA poor farm worker of the old countryside.
“In the Middle Ages, peasants worked the land for a rich lord.”
peasant is a farm worker.
Old French paisant comes from pais, a country, from Latin pagus, a rural district. Pagan and page come from related countryside.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂ǵ-
Latin
pāgus — countryside
Old French
païsant
Anglo-Norman
paisant
Middle English
paissaunt
English, today
peasant
Built from
From Late Middle English paissaunt, from Anglo-Norman paisant, from Old French païsant, païsan (“countryman, peasant”), from païs (“country”), from Latin pāgus (“countryside”) + Old French -enc (“member of”), from Frankish - -inc, -ing "-ing"; which was an alteration of earlier Latin pāgēnsis (“inhabitant of a district”). a doublet of paisano. Via pāgus cognate with pagan (compare typologically, see there for more).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA