1. Grass available only for grazing; esp. the aftermath, or growth after the hay is cut. Also with some defining word, as after-, spring, winter.
1641. Best, Farm. Bks. (Surtees), 129. Three landes in the Carre at 16s. 8d. a lande, without the eatage.
1723. Lond. Gaz., No. 6209/4. The Winter Eatage … arising from … West Inggs.
1784–1815. A. Young, Ann. Agric., XIX. 313, in Old Country Wds. (E. D. S.). There is no grass that will bring so heavy a crop of hay [as clover and rye-grass] and that after an early spring eatage.
1797. Burns, Eccl. Law, III. 469. The after-mowth or after-eatage. Ibid., 477. Cattle … put and kept upon the same land … for the spring eatage.
1863. Mrs. Toogood, Yorksh. Dial., The eatage of the Lanes of the Township will be let by ticket.
1877. Justice Lush, in Law Rep. Queen’s B., II. 449. The winter eatage of the tenement.
2. The right of using for pasture.
1857. C. B. Robinson, Gloss. Best’s Farm. Bks. (1856), 184. An increased charge being made for eatage of the fogge.
1869. E. S. Cayley, in Pall Mall Gaz., 6 Sept., 5/1. It is the eatage of the straw rather than the straw itself which belongs to the off-going tenant.
1885. East Cumbrld. News, 18 July. To be sold, eatage of fog.
