In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location.
However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all (cf. vicarage or hermitage).
In the United Kingdom the term cottage also tends to denote rural dwellings of traditional build, although it can also be applied to dwellings of modern construction which are designed to resemble traditional ones ("mock cottages") .
