cotton

1. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "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."; "Eyes closed, ears cottoned, the mind produces its own interior messages."transitive

2. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "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."; "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."; "The method of using the machine is as follows: — After having made the connection between the hot and cold water pipes and the machine at K, and having connected the outlet pipe with a drain, the machine is ready for cottoning."transitive

3. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "First comes bottling, which is done both by machine and by hand. This is followed by cottoning and capping."; "Although cottoning is performed by hand, the hand-capping operation is assisted by a mechanical friction wheel, driven through a flexible cable."; "Features of the CM/CCI (Continuous Motion, Close-Coupled Integrated) packaging line segment include control of containers from the bottle feeder through the filling/ cottoning operations and space savings in packaging line lengths."transitive

4. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "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."; "I went round and quietly cottoned all the nine holes, and next moring I found all the cottons intact."; "I planted out over 600 polyanthus plants, and almost without exception the sparrows had the new buds off — after I had both cottoned and sprayed with Jeyes. They also destroyed two rows of brussels sprouts seedlings — again after cottoning and spraying."transitive

5. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "The rooms downstairs were cottoned, the doors re-hung, and a counter put in the record office."; "Robinson, W., Whitehorse: cottoning and papering 10 rooms, hall and staircase, at sergeant's mess, $206;"; "Mr. Taylor said he reckoned the cost of cottoning at twelve and one-half cents per yard."transitive

6. (transitive) To provide with cotton.Examples: "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.""; "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."; "Tarring and feathering in the Northern States of America, or tarring and cottoning in the South (the last a freak frequently played with Abolitionists prior to the Great Civil War), could have been as nothing, looked upon as a frolic, compared with the racy humours of the Golden House."transitive