cottage industry
cottage industry noun: a job or occupation carried out at home or on a part-time basis, historically often manufacturing work such as sewing, lacemaking, or spinning.
Noun
cottage industry (plural cottage industries)
- 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
- A craft such as quilting may be pursued as a hobby or as a cottage industry.
- Synonyms:
- proto-industry
- 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
- So why was there so much breathlessness about a blogger joining this emphatically non-exclusive club? Because the blogging story has become a cottage industry, a cultural fashion trend that blogger and establishment alike have a vested interest in keeping alive.2005 March, William Powers, “Sleeping With the Enemy”, in The Atlantic
cottage industry meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati and Thai
cottage industry in Tamil
- occupation carried out at home
- குடிசைத்தொழில் kuṭicaittoḻil
- small-scale industry
- குடிசைத்தொழில் kuṭicaittoḻil
cottage industry in Malayalam
- occupation carried out at home
- കുടിൽ വ്യവസായം kuṭil vyavasāyaṁ
- small-scale industry
- കുടിൽ വ്യവസായം kuṭil vyavasāyaṁ
cottage industry in Gujarati
- occupation carried out at home
- ગૃહઉદ્યોગ gŕhaudyog
cottage industry in Thai
- occupation carried out at home
- อุตสาหกรรมในครัวเรือน
Examples of cottage industry in a sentence
- Shoe-making used to be an important cottage industry, but the introduction of machinery has carried the work to large factories elsewhere.1911, Horace Woollaston Monckton, Berkshire, Cambridge University Press:
- Remote and difficult to access, many villages in China’s interior have developed a criminal cottage industry, involving anything from drugs to internet fraud to counterfeiting.2017 April, Robert Foyle Hunwick, “Big in China: Murder Villages and Scam Towns”, in The Atlantic:
Synonyms of cottage industry
Forms of cottage industry
| plural | cottage industries |
|---|
Questions about cottage industry
- What does cottage industry mean?
- Cottage industry means a job or occupation carried out at home or on a part-time basis, historically often manufacturing work such as sewing, lacemaking, or spinning.
- What is cottage industry in Tamil?
- Cottage industry in Tamil is குடிசைத்தொழில் (kuṭicaittoḻil). See Cottage industry meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use cottage industry in a sentence?
- Shoe-making used to be an important cottage industry, but the introduction of machinery has carried the work to large factories elsewhere.
- What part of speech is cottage industry?
- Cottage industry is a noun.
- What is the plural of cottage industry?
- The plural of cottage industry is cottage industries.
Words near cottage industry in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-cottage industry.oga.
Cite this entry: “cottage industry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cottage_industry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.