Word.ws English Dictionary

cotton-picking

cotton-picking noun: the harvesting of cotton.

Noun

cotton-picking (uncountable)

  1. The harvesting of cotton
    • The season of cotton-picking commences in the latter part of July, and continues without intermission to the Christmas holidays.1859, Opportunities for Industry and the Safe Investment of Capital

Adjective

cotton-picking

  1. (US, colloquial, dialectal, idiomatic) An intensifier, like "darn", used for emphasis or to signify that something is of little value.
    • "Now hold up here just a cotton-picking minute,"1959, U.S. Army Aviation Center, U.S. Army Aviation School, United States Army aviation digest, page 31
    • "Oh, wait one damn cotton-picking minute," Andy said.1967, Howard Fast., The Hunter and the Trap, page 14
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cotton, picking.
    • "...are not entitled to anything, Mrs. Wright, (referring to one of the appellees), because your son (referring to the deceased, F.A. Wright, Jr.), was a cotton picking Negro."1965, “American law reports annotated. second series”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 76, page 1276

Examples of cotton-picking in a sentence

  • I think the President's Adviser on Domestic Affairs should keep his cotton-picking hands off the economic policy for a change.1975, Richard M Nixon - Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President:
  • Santana spat, “You've got to be out of your cotton-picking mind.2019, Larry Johns, The Devil's Breath:

Forms of cotton-picking

alternative formcotton-pickin'

Phrases with cotton-picking

Questions about cotton-picking

What does cotton-picking mean?
Cotton-picking means the harvesting of cotton.
How do you use cotton-picking in a sentence?
I think the President's Adviser on Domestic Affairs should keep his cotton-picking hands off the economic policy for a change.
What part of speech is cotton-picking?
Cotton-picking can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near cotton-picking in the dictionary

  1. cotton-headed
  2. cotton-headed ninny-muggins
  3. cotton-mouth
  4. Cotton-Mouton effect
  5. Cotton-Mouton effects
  6. cotton-picking
  7. cotton-spinner
  8. cotton-spinners
  9. cotton-wool
  10. cotton-wooly
  11. cottonade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cotton-picking (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cotton-picking.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cotton-picking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cotton-picking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.