CHURL

Churl

A churl, in its earliest Old English meaning, was simply "a man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelled ċeorl, and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it later came to mean the opposite of the nobility and royalty, "a common person". Says Chadwick:

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churl

Noun

  1. A rustic; a countryman or labourer; a peasant.
  2. A rough, surly, ill-bred person; a boor.
  3. A selfish miser; an illiberal person; a niggard.
  4. a freedman, ranked below a thane but above a thrall


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: churl
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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