cotton

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to take a liking to

   cotton to something

2. 2
   noun

   plant source

   K'a-shih has the most extensive cotton-growing area which amounted to 950 000 mou (6.3 million ares) in 1965.

3. 3
   noun

   manufactured product of such substance

   Now that she had rested and had fed from the luncheon tray Mrs. Broome had just removed, she had reverted to her normal gaiety. She looked cool in a grey tailored cotton dress with a terracotta scarf and shoes and her hair a black silk helmet.

4. 4
   verb

   To provide with cotton.

   Goddamned fools had cottoned the land, and just worked it to death, destroying the topsoil, so it blew away, and then, when the rains came, gullied it, so that it wasn't worth a damn for anything.

5. 5
   verb

   To make or become cotton-like

   The finishing operations consisted of shearing the nap from the cloth, and frizzing, or cottoning, the surface, by pressing with hot irons.

6. 6
   verb

   To protect from harsh stimuli, coddle, or muffle.

   Jeanne's house, like Usher's, is a void of great silence and immobility and the "somnambulistic gardens" surrounding her house like Usher's tarn "cottoned the sound from the world."

7. 7
   verb

   To rub or burnish with cotton.

   To oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor — to skin those in charge of one's own interests while cottoning and oiling the residuary product of another's skinnery — that is not very good benevolence, nor very good sense, but it serves in place of both.

8. 8
   verb

   To get on with someone or something; to have a good relationship with someone.

   What meanes this? doth he dote so much of this strange harlot indeed? now I perceiue how this geare cottens.

Etymology

1560s, either from Welsh cydun, cytun (“agree, coincide”) (cyduno, cytuno), from cyd, cyt + un (“one”), literally “to be at one with”, or by metaphor with the textile, as cotton blended well with other textiles, notably wool in hat-making.