different between zamindar vs peasant

English

Alternative forms

• zemindar, zumeendar

Etymology

From Hindi ???????? (zam?nd?r), from Persian ????????? (zamin-dâr).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /z??mi?nd??/

Noun

zamindar (plural zamindars)

1. (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, now historical) An Indian landowner who collected local taxes and paid them to the British government.
   • 1861, Henry Mayhew et al., London Labour and the London Poor, London: C. Griffin, Volume 4, p. 120,^[1]

     In Bengal there were […] many female zemindars, or village revenue administrators, who were, however, subject to the influence, but not to the authority, of the male members of their family.

   • 1997, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, New York: Random House, Chapter 2, p. 63,^[2]

     An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality?a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood.

   • 2004, Khushwant Singh, Burial at Sea, Penguin 2014, p. 6:

     Indian princes, zamindars and industrialists engaged him as their counsel and paid him whatever he asked for as fees.

   • 2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin 2015, p. 39:

     Thus it happened that the approach of the Ibis was witnessed by Raja Neel Rattan Halder, the zemindar of Raskhali, who was on board the palatial barge with his eight-year-old son and a sizeable retune of attendants.

   • 2017, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin 2017, p. 402:

     The power of the zamindars, who were mainly Brahmin or Rajput, was challenged in a series of peasant movements between 1919 and 1921, when Charan Singh was in his late teens.

Derived terms

• zamindari
• zemindarate

Further reading

• zamindar on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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