What is called a cottage nowadays?

a cottage

A cottage is a special holiday accommodation. It’s usually a small vacation house where tourists are allowed to act as it were their own during their whole stay. According to Wikipedia, the word cottage comes from England where it originally was a house that has a ground floor, with a first, lower storey of bedrooms which fit within the roofspace.

In numerous countries, cottage refers to a small old-fashioned dwelling. Nowadays, it refers to a cozy, modest house usually located in a semi-rural spot. In the UK the term cottage means a more or less narrow home of traditional build, however, it might also refer to modern dwellings designed to look like old ones (called "mockcottages").

The term cottage often refers to a small vacation house. Nonetheless, there are cottage-style constructions in urban areas that were designed mainly to house slaves, and in some countries like Canada for instance, the word commonly doesn’t refer to a size at all. It’s also good to know that In the United States, this kind of holiday dwelling is usually called a “chalet”, "cabin" or even "camp".

The country cottage remains an icon that carries multiple, often opposing, meanings. It has shaped the way that rural housing has been designed, built, and sold over a number of years.