village

Village ends in -age, one of the workhorse French suffixes in English, alongside courage, marriage, damage, baggage and passage. English took it in the late 1300s from Old French vilage, from Latin villaticum, "a farmstead with its outbuildings," from villa, "country house."

So the word underneath is agricultural: a village is what gathers around a farm. The same Latin villa gives English villa directly and, less obviously, villain — originally a farm labourer, a person tied to the villa, whose social descent into wickedness tells you a good deal about how the medieval French-speaking aristocracy regarded the people who worked the land. The word acquired the sense of a small self-contained district within a city by 1865, and village idiot is recorded from 1825.

village
(n.)
late 14c., "inhabited assemblage of houses larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town," from Old French
vilage
"houses and other buildings in a group" (usually smaller than a town), from Latin
villaticum
"farmstead" (with outbuildings), noun use of neuter singular of
villaticus
"having to do with a farmstead or villa," from
villa
"country house" (see
villa
).
By 1865 in reference to a small, self-contained district within a city. As an adjective from 1580s, "of, belonging to, or characteristic of a village."
Village idiot
is recorded from 1825.
also from late 14c.

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