What is "peppercorn rent"

Usage examples of "peppercorn rent".

LOCALE: since it was illegal by city ordinance to occupy that much space by herself what Guinevere had done was to make a settlement on her husband whom she was divorcing largely because his name was Dwiggins and get him to buy with it the vacant apartment below her penthouse and then lease it to her for an indefinite period at a peppercorn rent which was not illegal and the chief method by which the ostentatiously wealthy in the modern super-crowded city secured for themselves that ultimate in contemporary status symbols a home many times larger than one person could reasonably require - to wit two rooms one above the other forty-eight feet by thirty-two, two (ditto) thirty by eighteen, two (ditto) twenty-one by eighteen, four bathrooms en suite and two not, four additional toilets, two kitchen-eateries, and a roof-garden which Guinevere had had .

For the post office was next to the village green, let at a peppercorn rent by the local landowner for cricket, and next to that was the war memorial with the shocking numbers of dead from such a small place, and behind that again was a devotion to a country capable of such equanimity that the decision to close an underused amenity for one afternoon could cause uproar.