farmer
farmer Lexical Profile
farmer Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A person who owns, manages, or works on a farm, cultivating land, growing crops, or raising livestock for food or raw materials.
"The local farmer wakes before dawn every morning to irrigate the cornfields and tend to the dairy cattle."
Historically, a person who contracted to collect taxes, revenues, or customs duties by paying a fixed sum to a government in exchange for keeping the proceeds.
"In eighteenth-century France, a wealthy tax farmer could amass a vast fortune by collecting royal duties from the peasantry."
• Rhymes for farmer
Word Origin & Etymology
Entered Middle English from Anglo-Norman fermier, from Old French ferme ('fixed payment' or 'lease'), ultimately from Medieval Latin firma ('fixed payment'), as a farmer originally referred to a tax collector or someone who leased land for a fixed fee before shifting to one who cultivates the land.