different between pleasantry vs peasantry

English

Etymology

From French plaisanterie. Surface etymology is pleasant +? -ry

Noun

pleasantry (countable and uncountable, plural pleasantries)

1. A casual, courteous remark.
2. A playful remark; a jest.
   • 2014, Daniel Taylor, England and Wayne Rooney see off Scotland in their own back yard (in The Guardian, 18 November 2014)[1]

     Charlie Mulgrew could easily have been shown two yellow cards by a stricter referee and amid all the usual Anglo-Scottish pleasantries, the two sets of fans put an awful lot of effort into trying to drown out one another’s national anthems.

3. (dated) Anything that promotes pleasure or merriment.

Usage notes

The word originally meant a joke or witticism. It is now generally used to mean only polite conversation in general (as in the phrase "exchange of pleasantries"), which is sometimes proscribed.

Translations

See also

• small talk

English

Etymology

From peasant +? -ry, from Middle English paissaunt.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?z?nt?i/
• Hyphenation: peas?ant?ry

Noun

peasantry (countable and uncountable, plural peasantries)

1. (historical) Impoverished rural farm workers, either as serfs, small freeholders or hired hands.
   • 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, Chapter 3.

     They distressed her. They were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to poverty. They were peasants, she groaned.

2. Ignorant people of the lowest social status; bumpkins, rustics.
   • 1885, George Eliot, Silas Marner, Chapter 1.

     Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the gray-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.

Translations