different between peasant vs fellah

English

Etymology

From Late Middle English paissaunt, from Anglo-Norman paisant, from Middle French païsant (“païsant”), from Old French païsan (“countryman, peasant”), from païs (“country”), from Late Latin p?g?nsis (“inhabitant of a district”), from Latin p?gus (“district”) + Old French -enc (“member of”), from Frankish -inc, -ing "-ing". More at -ing. Doublet of paisano.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?z?nt/
• Rhymes: -?z?nt

Noun

peasant (plural peasants)

1. A member of the lowly social class that toils on the land, constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, farmhands and other laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture and horticulture.
2. A country person.
3. (derogatory) An uncouth, crude or ill-bred person.
4. (strategy games) A worker unit.

Synonyms

• (lowly social class) peon, serf
• churl
• (country person) rustic, villager
• (crude person) boor

Derived terms

• peasantry

Translations

Further reading

• "peasant" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 231.

Anagrams

• Patanes, Pestana, Tapanes, anapest, patenas

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?l?/

Etymology 1

From Arabic ???????? (fall??, “peasant”), from Classical Syriac ????? (“worker; peasant”). Attested since 1743.

Noun

fellah (plural fellahs or fellahin or fellaheen)

1. A peasant, farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa.
   • 1920, Archibald Sayce, “Cairene and Upper Egyptian Folk-Lore” in Folk-Lore 31 p. 176

     Religion long kept the two races, Arab and Egyptian, apart, and when eventually the Christian fella? in the neighbourhood of Cairo had become Mohammedan, the Mohammedan Arab had become a townsman with a townsman’s sense of superiority over the country bumpkin.

   • 1929-1930, H P Lovecraft, Fungi from Yuggoth

     And at the last from inner Egypt came // The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed

   • 1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York Review Books 2006, p. 39:

     It differed from the Ulema both in a more modernistic interpretation of Islamic dogma and in its social demands, which included the redistribution of land among the fellahs.

Translations

Etymology 2

Representing an eye dialect pronunciation of fellow.

Noun

fellah (plural fellahs)

1. Alternative spelling of fella

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from Arabic ???????? (fall??), from Aramaic ????? / ????? (pall???, “worker; peasant”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fel?la/
• Rhymes: -a
• Hyphenation: fel?làh

Noun

fellah m (invariable)

1. fellah

References

• fellah in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana