Word: cotton Part of Speech: verb Etymology: From Middle English cotoun, from Anglo-Norman cotun, Old French coton, from (Genoese) Old Italian cotone, from Arabic قُطُن (quṭun), from Hebrew כֻּתֹּנֶת (kuttṓnĕṯ). Pronunciation: /ˈkɒt.n̩/, [ˈkʰɒt.n̩], /ˈkɑt.n̩/, [ˈkɑ.ʔn̩] 1. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: 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. Example: Eyes closed, ears cottoned, the mind produces its own interior messages. 2. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: Supposing a frame, or set of moulds, as represented at B, to have wicks carried through each mould, or regularly cottoned, and each wick to be held accurately in the centre of the mould by means of the series of nippers shown at fig. 8, the moulds are first taken to the position shown at B 1, figs. 2, 3, and 4, where they are supported in a perpendicular position on the small straight edges or railway d, d, as seen at fig. 3. Example: Each machine has on average 200 moulds, each mould contains 18 bobbins, and each bobbin, when first cottoned, 60 yards of wick, so that supposing all the frames of our seven machines to be fresh cottoned at the same time, we should have above 800 miles of wick in work. 3. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: First comes bottling, which is done both by machine and by hand. This is followed by cottoning and capping. Example: Although cottoning is performed by hand, the hand-capping operation is assisted by a mechanical friction wheel, driven through a flexible cable. 4. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: When a tree is to be cottoned the ends from the cops are brought together and tied in a rough knot, which is hitched to a twig. Then, with the tube held upright, the operator walks round the tree as many times as may be necessary to cover it with lines of cotton, raising the metal tube about three feet after each round. Example: I went round and quietly cottoned all the nine holes, and next moring I found all the cottons intact. 5. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: The rooms downstairs were cottoned, the doors re-hung, and a counter put in the record office. Example: Robinson, W., Whitehorse: cottoning and papering 10 rooms, hall and staircase, at sergeant's mess, $206; 6. To provide with cotton. Labels: transitive Example: Tar and cotton him," said a student from the college, more facetiously, perhaps, more mercifully inclined. " Think, fellows, what a pretty bird he will be, with cotton for feathers ; — so downy." Example: The Southerners caught him ; and, as a natural consequence of his capture, he was, after a little preliminary cowhiding and railriding, tarred and cottoned; the soft and downy substance growing in the pod of the cotton plant being in the sunny South the substitute for 'the penal plumes' —as Sydney Smith in humorous euphuism called the feathers wwibh, in combination with a coating of pitch, made up the ignominious livery of an offender whom the Americans delight to dishonour. 7. To make or become cottonlike. Labels: transitive Example: The finishing operations consisted of shearing the nap from the cloth, and frizzing, or cottoning, the surface, by pressing with hot irons. Example: When the cloth is thus shorn on one side, it is for the most part cottoned on the other side, which they call the wrong side ; but frizes are cottoned on the " right side", for cottoning makes them such. 8. To make or become cottonlike. Labels: transitive Example: At this moment he saw the plate cottoning, as he expressed it, to his young friend, Charles Freeland, who sat in the pew at his right. He watched to see what the young merchant would give ; and to his amazement, he saw the young man put in a fifty dollar note! Example: Used at medium to thin consistency to avoid stringing or cottoning and to assure proper spreading characteristics. 9. To make or become cottonlike. Labels: transitive Example: A fair piece ahead, in answering signal cottoned the sky in rhythmic puffs. Example: Choppy waves cottoned the bay. 10. To make or become cottonlike. Labels: transitive Example: Fog cottoned the steep, wooded slopes on each side of the lake, and the air was chill and penetrating. Example: There was no evidence by Thursday of the snowfall that had thickly cottoned the Taunton area; the town and state plows had scraped the roads clean, and the only sight of snow remaining lay in the drifts and patches on the sheltered, wooded slopes northward. 11. To protect from harsh stimuli, coddle, or muffle. Example: 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." Example: The violins were muted, the hands were gloved, carpets were unrolled forever under the feet, and the gardens cottoned the sound from the world. 12. To rub or burnish with cotton. Example: 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. Example: It was inclined to be scummy in developing, and the consequent vigorous 'cottoning' or rubbing with a swab of absorbent cotton while in the developing sink, which was necessary to open it up, often caused injury to the image.