Word.ws English Dictionary

cottage industries

cottage industries is the plural of cottage industry.

Meaning of cottage industry

Noun

cottage industry (plural cottage industries)

  1. A job or occupation carried out at home or on a part-time basis, historically often manufacturing work such as sewing, lacemaking, or spinning.
    • Near-synonym: proto-industry
    Synonyms:
    proto-industry
  2. (broadly) A small-scale industry, with relatively few employees or a limited customer base or low economic impact.
    • Customers quickly sensed the change when CA took over a company: The new owners vigorously enforced license agreements, often in the courts. A cottage industry soon sprang up to advise companies on how to negotiate with CA.1996 November 11, Amy Cortese, “Computer Associates: Sexy? No. Profitable? You Bet”, in BusinessWeek, archived from the original on 09 Jun 2000

Questions about cottage industries

What is cottage industries the plural of?
Cottage industries is the plural of cottage industry.

Words near cottage industries in the dictionary

  1. Cottage Grove
  2. cottage home
  3. cottage homes
  4. cottage hospital
  5. cottage hospitals
  6. cottage industries
  7. cottage industry
  8. cottage loaf
  9. cottage loaves
  10. cottage orchard
  11. cottage orchards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cottage industries (page history and authors); cottage industry (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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