Word.ws English Dictionary

cotton-wool

cotton-wool is the alternative form of cotton wool.

Meaning of cotton wool

Noun

cotton wool (usually uncountable, plural cotton wools)

  1. (US, usually) Raw fibers of cotton before being processed.
  2. (UK, usually) Soft, absorbent cotton for medical or cosmetic use, protective padding, etc.

Verb

cotton-wool (third-person singular simple present cotton-wools, present participle cotton-wooling, simple past and past participle cotton-wooled)

  1. (transitive) To cover with, or in, cotton wool.

Forms of cotton-wool

Noun
pluralcotton-wools
Verb
third-person singular presentcotton-wools
present participlecotton-wooling
past participlecotton-wooled
pastcotton-wooled

Questions about cotton-wool

What does cotton-wool mean?
Cotton-wool means to cover with, or in, cotton wool.
What is cotton-wool the alternative form of?
Cotton-wool is the alternative form of cotton wool.
What part of speech is cotton-wool?
Cotton-wool is a verb.
What is the past tense of cotton-wool?
The past tense of cotton-wool is cotton-wooled.

Words near cotton-wool in the dictionary

  1. Cotton-Mouton effect
  2. Cotton-Mouton effects
  3. cotton-picking
  4. cotton-spinner
  5. cotton-spinners
  6. cotton-wool
  7. cotton-wooly
  8. cottonade
  9. cottonades
  10. cottonball
  11. cottonballs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cotton-wool (page history and authors); cotton wool (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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Cite this entry: “cotton-wool.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cotton-wool. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.