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A small collection of houses; a village. "Every manor, town, or vill." Sir M. Hale. Not should e'er the crested fowl From thorp or vill his matins sound for me. Wordsworth.

A country seat; a country or suburban residence of some pretensions to elegance. Dryden. Cowper.

A small assemblage of houses in the country, less than a town or city. Village cart, a kind of two-wheeled pleasure carriage without a top.

An inhabitant of a village. Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard condition. Shak.

Villages; a district of villages. [Obs.] "The maidens of the villagery." Shak.

One who holds lands by a base, or servile, tenure, or in villenage; a feudal tenant of the lowest class, a bondman or servant. [In this sense written also villan, and villein.] If any of my ansectors was a tenant, and a servant, and held his lands as a villain to his lord, his posterity also must do so, though accident…

Base; vile; mean; depraved; as, a villainous person or wretch.

The quality or state of being a villain, or villainous; extreme depravity; atrocious wickedness; as, the villainy of the seducer. "Lucre of vilanye." Chaucer. The commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy. Shak.

A little villa. [R.] Gay.

A villain. [R.]

The state of a villain, or serf; base servitude; tenure on condition of doing the meanest services for the lord. [In this sense written also villenage, and villeinage.] I speak even now as if sin were condemned in a perpetual villanage, never to be manumitted. Milton. Some faint traces of villanage were detected by the…

A ballad. [Obs.] Cotton.

An old rustic dance, accompanied with singing.

A poem written in tercets with but two rhymes, the first and third verse of the first stanza alternating as the third verse in each successive stanza and forming a couplet at the close. E. W. Gosse.

A small villa. [R.]

; to debase; to degrade; to revile. [R.] Were virtue by descent, a noble name Could never villanize his father's fame. Dryden.

One who villanizes. [R.]

See Villainous, etc.

See Villainy.

Of or pertaining to a farm or a village; rural. "Tame villatic fowl." Milton.