coterie: [18] In Old French, coterie was a term for an association of peasant tenants under the feudal system. It was probably derived from an unrecorded *cote ‘hut’. This would have been borrowed from Middle Low German kote, a relative of English cote and cot. In French the word gradually broadened out in meaning to ‘group of people sharing a common interest’, the sense in which English borrowed it in the mid- 18th century.
1738, from French coterie "circle of acquaintances," originally in Middle French an organization of peasants holding land from a feudal lord (14c.), from cotier "tenant of a cote" (see cottage).
