colonus

From Latin colōnus.

colonus (plural coloni)

1. (historical) A sharecropping tenant farmer of the late Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages.

• Coulons, Coulson

From the root of colō (“cultivate, till”) + -ō + -us.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /koˈloː.nus/, [kɔˈɫ̪oːnʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /koˈlo.nus/, [koˈlɔːnus]

colōnus m (genitive colōnī, feminine colōna); second declension

1. farmer, especially a kind of tenant farmer or sharecropper; husbandman; tiller of the soil
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 1.677–678:

     frūgibus immēnsīs avidōs satiāte colōnōs,
     ut capiant cultūs praemia digna suī.

     Satisfy eager farmers with abundant crops,
     that they may reap rewards worthy of their labors.

2. colonist, colonial, inhabitant

   Colonos novos ascribere.

   To appoint new inhabitants.

Second-declension noun.

• (farmer): agricola, arātor

• “colonus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “colonus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• colonus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• colonus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “colonus”, in The Perseus Project (1999) Perseus Encyclopedia‎
• “colonus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers