A cottage, during England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or bordar) of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide some form of service to the manorial lord. However, in time cottage just became the general term for a small house. In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cosy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location and not necessarily in England. The cottage orné, often quite large and grand residences built by the nobility, dates back to a movement of "rustic" stylised cottages of the late 18th and early 19th century during the Romantic movement.

In British English the term now denotes a small dwelling of traditional build, although it can also be applied to modern construction designed to resemble traditional houses ("mock cottages"). Cottages may be detached houses, or terraced, such as those built to house workers in mining villages. The tied accommodation provided to farm workers was usually a cottage, see cottage garden. In England the term holiday cottage now denotes a specialised form of residential let property, attracting various tax benefits to the owner.

The holiday cottage exists in many cultures under different names. In American English, "cottage" is one term for such holiday homes, although they may also be called a "cabin", "chalet", or even "camp". In Australia, the term "cabin" is common, cottage usually referring to a smaller pre-modern period dwelling. In certain countries (e.g. Nordics, Baltics, and Russia) the term "cottage" has local synonyms: In Finnish mökki, in Estonian suvila, in Latvian vasarnīca, in Livonian sõvvõkuodā, in Swedish stuga, in Norwegian hytte (from the German word Hütte), in Czech or Slovak chata or chalupa, in Russian дача (dacha, which can refer to a vacation/summer home, often located near a body of water).

In places such as Canada, "cottage" carries no connotations of size (compare with vicarage or hermitage).