cotton

Forms

1.A fibrous substance:
- Someday I'll buy a cotton candy machine.
2.A 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.A manufactured product of such a substance:
- Do not re-use needles; use fresh cottons each time.
- The little girls appeared, looking fresh and cool in pretty pink cottons, and we two elder ones seized the opportunity of making a more elaborate toilette than usual.
4.A liking.
- Someday I'll buy a cotton candy machine.

1.To make or become cottonlike.
- A mist cottoned the hills inland.
- Webs made from them had to be frizzed or cottoned.
- Fog cottoned the roads under a sky like rusted tin.
2.To protect from harsh stimuli, coddle, or muffle.
- The violins were muted, the hands were gloved, carpets were unrolled forever under the feet, and the gardens cottoned the sound from the world.
- 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."
- Indeed, pragmatism and technicism cottoned the American soul from some of the worst pains of an unmysterious world, although they would later be poor guardians against its encroachment.
3.To provide with cotton.
- Eyes closed, ears cottoned, the mind produces its own interior messages.
- Mr. Taylor said he reckoned the cost of cottoning at twelve and one-half cents per yard.
- The rooms downstairs were cottoned, the doors re-hung, and a counter put in the record office.

Rare· #4052

From Middle English cotoun

From Anglo-Norman cotun, Old French coton

From (Genoese) Old Italian cotone

From Arabic قُطُن (quṭun)

From Hebrew כֻּתֹּנֶת (kuttṓnĕṯ).