homesteader

noun

home·​stead·​er ˈhōm-ˌste-dər 

plural homesteaders

: someone who homesteads:

a

: someone who acquires, settles on, or occupies land under a homestead law (see homestead law sense 2)

As more homesteaders arrived, they took more and more Native American land.

—Ann Byers

Her grandmother came to Kansas in a covered wagon as a homesteader in 1883 …

—Mark Binelli

b

: someone who lives frugally or self-sufficiently (as on a homestead) especially by growing and preserving food

There are modern-day homesteaders who have traded contemporary conveniences such as … a reliable internet connection to grow much of their own food and—as much as possible—live off the land …

—Chris Moody

We are city homesteaders. We have a 100-foot lot and make the most of it.

—Faye Waloch

As a homesteader, you might even fish as a means to put more food on the table.

—Kacey Mya

Many homesteaders make their own soaps, skin care items, and herbal remedies or sew or knit their own clothing, and in other ways reduce the need for shopping and consumerism.

—Kristin Lie-Nielsen

Examples of homesteader in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

As a Black homesteader myself, I've been met with resistance to farm work in my networks. —Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press, 27 Nov. 2024

In the nineteenth century, the Jacksonians combined a strong aversion to government debt with demands that the government's most valuable asset (title to the vast public lands of the West) be transferred to homesteaders at no cost. —Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, 1 Mar. 2011

Now, my grandmother was sort of a California hillbilly, the eldest of 17 kids, and her dad was a homesteader and a medicine showman. —Chris Willman, Variety, 2 Nov. 2024

Highlights include dogsledding, curling lessons with locals, dining with homesteaders, soaking in geothermal hot springs, snowshoeing on private land, and tea with reindeer herders. —Laura Begley Bloom, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2024

Word History

Etymology

homestead entry 2 + -er entry 2

First Known Use

1865, in the meaning defined above