Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cotton \Cot"ton\ (k[o^]t"t'n), n. [F. coton, Sp. algodon the cotton plant and its wool, coton printed cotton, cloth, fr. Ar. qutun, alqutun, cotton wool. Cf. Acton, Hacqueton.]
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.
The cotton plant. See Cotten plant, below.
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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 (Zo["o]l.), a species of bark louse ( Pulvinaria innumerabilis), which does great damage to the cotton plant.
Cotton shrub. Same as Cotton plant.
Cotton stainer (Zo["o]l.), 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.
Wiktionary
n. A machine used for separating cotton fibers from cotton seeds, etc.
WordNet
n. a machine that separates the seeds from raw cotton fibers [syn: gin]
Wikipedia
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The fibers are processed into various cotton goods such as linens, and any undamaged cotton was used for clothes. Seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil.
Although simple handheld roller gins have been used in India and other countries since at oldest 500 AD, the first modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. However, the Indian worm-gear roller gin, invented some time around the sixteenth century, has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time. Whitney's gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Modern automated cotton gins use multiple powered cleaning cylinders and saws, and offer far higher productivity than their hand-powered forebears.
Usage examples of "cotton gin".
During each picking season, at least one worker would fall victim to some gruesome injury inside the cotton gin.
There was no way he could seek revenge against Belladonna at the cotton gin.
There are besides three tavern- keepers, the shrewd Scot who runs the cotton gin-mill, two white ladies, and a sprinkling of people 'on the beach'--a South Sea expression for which there is no exact equivalent.
And that cotton gin where you occasionally find the time to put in a few hours a week?
The invention of the cotton gin had brought new life to slavery in the United States.
He say he want to fight but got to stay home and run his daddy's cotton gin.
Maybe they didn't even know there was to be an election, that all the , men in the county would be riding toward Jefferson tomorrow with pistols in their pockets, and that the Burdens already had their nigger voters camped in a cotton gin on the edge of town under guard.
Other instances are Eli Whitney's 1794 invention of his cotton gin to replace laborious hand cleaning of cotton grown in the U.
Whitney at Connecticut a mechanic of the first order of ingenuity, who invented the cotton gin now so much used in the South.
America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time.