A farm worker, usually poor. The most common type of person in a pre-industrial society (usually
66 to 95%), and of the lowest class.
Peasants were/are typically small farmers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, farmhands, and laborers and invariably rural, living in villages and
tending land which is practically theirs but officially belongs to the wealthy.
Usually an insult for dirty,
uncouth, unsophisticated people of low status.
Peasants stereotypically have virtually no education, nonexistent hygiene, are conservative, and have almost no rights, despite that their work requires careful planning and that they are not
averse to protests.
The peasant woman, her three daughters, and her husband's many kinswomen tended the garden and the livestock while their
menfolk toiled in the fields. They had little option but either work until their backs gave out or starve, plus they had to pay heavy taxes for the rich.
