Noun

Singular cottage

Plural cottages

cottage (plural cottages)

1. A small house; a cot; a hut.

Derived terms

• cottage cheese
• cottage industry

Verb

Infinitive to cottage

Third person singular cottages

Simple past cottaged

Past participle cottaged

Present participle cottaging

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

1. (intransitive, British, slang) Of men: To have homosexual sex in a public lavatory; to practice cottaging.

In modern usage, a cottage is a modest dwelling, typically in a rural, or semi-rural location (although there are cottage-style dwellings in cities). In the United Kingdom, the term cottage tends to denote a rurally- (sometimes village-) located one-and-a-half story property, where on the second (upstairs floor) one has to walk into the eaves in order to look through the windows, which are generally located in dormers (the sort of dwelling that some Americans call a Cape Cod).

This sometimes means that the eave timbers intrude into the actual living space, and quite often, especially in recent renovations, the relevant timbers (purlins, rafters, posts, etc) can be exposed enhancing the cottage experience. However, in most other settings, the term "cottage" denotes a small, often cosy dwelling, and small size is integral to the description, but in other places such as Canada, the term exists with no connotation of size at all (cf. vicarage or hermitage).

In Soutern Ontario, Canada, the term "cottage" usually refers to a vacation/summer home, often located near a body of water. However, this is more commonly called a "cabin" in Western Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador, a "chalet" in Quebec, and a camp in Northern Ontario, New Brunswick and the adjacent US states of Maine, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Northern New York.