▪ I. conacre, n.
(ˈkɒneɪkə(r))
Also corn-acre.
[See quots. 1824–27.]
In Irish land-system: The letting by a tenant, for the season, of small portions of land ready ploughed and prepared for a crop.
(Originally the plot was given manured, but a later state of matters appears in quot. 1882.)
| 1824 Major Warburton Evid. bef. Commons Comm. 20 May 131 What do you mean by mockground?.. Do you not refer to muckground? It may be; they call it corn⁓acre. 1825 O'Connell ibid. 25 Feb. 51 What is the con⁓acre system?.. It is a right to plant a crop, paying sometimes 6, 8 or 10 pounds an acre for that right by the single year, and the crop is detained till that rent is made up. 1827 Westm. Rev. Jan., These tenancies are usually termed..corn-acres, or, by corruption of that word, con-acres. 1835 Inglis Trav. Irel. I. 57 What con-acre means..a farmer manures, ploughs, and in every way prepares a large field to receive a crop. A poorer description of persons rent off portions..a half, a quarter, or an eighth of an acre, for one season, and all that these have to provide is the seed. 1882 P. H. Bagenal in 19th Cent. Dec. 926 This privilege of conacre having been given, the labourer has to bring manure at his own expense. |
| attrib. 1838 Athenæum 773 Conacre rents. 1860 Trollope Castle Richmond (Tauchn.) II. 176 (Hoppe) The fields had been let out under the con-acre system..for the potato-season. 1881 19th Cent. Mar. 536 The willing but wageless conacre man. |
▪ II. ˈconacre, v.
[f. the n.]
trans. To sublet in conacre.
| 1839 Blackw. Mag. XLV. 764 The under-tenants con⁓acred it out to tenants still more desperate than themselves. 1869 Echo 28 Sept. 3/3 ‘Conacreing’..is the subletting, at enormous rents, of their ground by small tenants to their still smaller brethren. |
So ˈconacreism, the system, of conacre. ˈconacrer, one who uses a piece of land on this system.
| 1847 Barmby in Tait's Mag. XIV. 267 An approximation to the Conacreism, and Middlemen, of starving Ireland. 1869 Echo 28 Sept. 3/3 The conacrers, being too poor to buy manure, frequently burn the surface of the ground and so impoverish it for years. |