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Cotton   /kˈɑtən/  /kˈɔtən/   Listen
noun
Cotton  n.  
1.
A soft, downy substance, resembling fine wool, consisting of the unicellular twisted hairs which grow on the seeds of the cotton plant. Long-staple cotton has a fiber sometimes almost two inches long; short-staple, from two thirds of an inch to an inch and a half.
2.
The cotton plant. See Cotten plant, below.
3.
Cloth made of cotton. Note: Cotton is used as an adjective before many nouns in a sense which commonly needs no explanation; as, cotton bagging; cotton cloth; cotton goods; cotton industry; cotton mill; cotton spinning; cotton tick.
Cotton cambric. See Cambric, n., 2.
Cotton flannel, the manufactures' name for a heavy cotton fabric, twilled, and with a long plush nap. In England it is called swan's-down cotton, or Canton flannel.
Cotton gin, a machine to separate the seeds from cotton, invented by Eli Whitney.
Cotton grass (Bot.), a genus of plants (Eriphorum) of the Sedge family, having delicate capillary bristles surrounding the fruit (seedlike achenia), which elongate at maturity and resemble tufts of cotton.
Cotton mouse (Zool.), a field mouse (Hesperomys gossypinus), injurious to cotton crops.
Cotton plant (Bot.), a plant of the genus Gossypium, of several species, all growing in warm climates, and bearing the cotton of commerce. The common species, originally Asiatic, is Gossypium herbaceum.
Cotton press, a building and machinery in which cotton bales are compressed into smaller bulk for shipment; a press for baling cotton.
Cotton rose (Bot.), a genus of composite herbs (Filago), covered with a white substance resembling cotton.
Cotton scale (Zool.), a species of bark louse (Pulvinaria innumerabilis), which does great damage to the cotton plant.
Cotton shrub. Same as Cotton plant.
Cotton stainer (Zool.), a species of hemipterous insect (Dysdercus suturellus), which seriously damages growing cotton by staining it; called also redbug.
Cotton thistle (Bot.), the Scotch thistle. See under Thistle.
Cotton velvet, velvet in which the warp and woof are both of cotton, and the pile is of silk; also, velvet made wholly of cotton.
Cotton waste, the refuse of cotton mills.
Cotton wool, cotton in its raw or woolly state.
Cotton worm (Zool.), a lepidopterous insect (Aletia argillacea), which in the larval state does great damage to the cotton plant by eating the leaves. It also feeds on corn, etc., and hence is often called corn worm, and Southern army worm.


verb
Cotton  v. i.  
1.
To rise with a regular nap, as cloth does. (Obs.) "It cottons well; it can not choose but bear A pretty nap."
2.
To go on prosperously; to succeed. (Obs.) "New, Hephestion, does not this matter cotton as I would?"
3.
To unite; to agree; to make friends; usually followed by with. (Colloq.) "A quarrel will end in one of you being turned off, in which case it will not be easy to cotton with another." "Didst see, Frank, how the old goldsmith cottoned in with his beggarly companion?"
4.
To take a liking to; to stick to one as cotton; used with to. (Slang)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Cotton" Quotes from Famous Books



... do with delicacies. A list of our articles of clothing would only invite the modern boy's scorn. On no pretext did we wear socks or shoes till we had passed our tenth year. In the cold weather a second cotton tunic over the first one sufficed. It never entered our heads to consider ourselves ill-off for that reason. It was only when old Niyamat, the tailor, would forget to put a pocket into one of our tunics that we complained, for no boy has yet been born so poor as not to have the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... twins hadn't always taken the furniture to pieces, and mother is so fussy about anything of that sort. She finally suggested the winter bedroom for Atlantic's incarceration, as it has nothing in it but a huge coal-stove enveloped in a somewhat awe-inspiring cotton sheet. I put in a comfortable low chair, a checkerboard, and some books, fixing the time limit at half an hour. By the way, Mary, that's such a pretty idea of yours to leave the door unlocked, and tell the children to come out of their own accord whenever they ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... still, you can hear it easily. There is a kind of kink in nature which breeds the law that very small interruptions will mar your pleasure in good music, but nothing less than a dynamite explosion can drown the bad; even cotton wool in your ears or the wax employed by the sailors of Ulysses will not ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... was endowed with a spirit of resistance—a gift frequently fatal to its possessor, for it breaks where another disposition would have bent; the result was that blows did not become deadened upon her as upon what might be termed the cotton-wadded feelings of Maria Theresa. Her heart rebounded at each attack, and therefore, whenever she was attacked, even in a manner that almost stunned her, she returned blow for blow to any one imprudent enough ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... America," a prophecy since three times fulfilled; and admits that "the new omnipotence of the steam engine is hewing aside quite other mountains than the physical," i.e. bridging the gulf between races and binding men to men. He had found, since writing Sartor, that dear cotton and slow trains do not help one nearer to God, freedom, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol


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