cotton ceiling
cotton ceiling noun: a social barrier to consideration (by cisgender women) of transgender women as viable sexual partners.
Noun
cotton ceiling (plural cotton ceilings)
- A social barrier to consideration (by cisgender women) of transgender women as viable sexual partners.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cotton, ceiling.
- On rough nights, however, the wind that finds its way beneath the rafters keeps drawing up and down the cotton ceiling in sudden gusts, and if the fastenings of your canopy are not very artfully contrived, one end or other of it is sure to give way […]1872, Mrs. Edward Millett, An Australian Parsonage; Or, The Settler and the Savage, page 56
- These ceilings on this house are not a canvas ceiling. They are a cotton ceiling and the water can drop on these ceilings […]1933, State of New York Supreme Court Record on Appeal, page 85
Forms of cotton ceiling
| plural | cotton ceilings |
|---|
Origin of cotton ceiling
Coined by Canadian activist Drew Deveaux. Modelled on glass ceiling. Underwear is typically made from cotton.
Questions about cotton ceiling
- What does cotton ceiling mean?
- Cotton ceiling means a social barrier to consideration (by cisgender women) of transgender women as viable sexual partners.
- What part of speech is cotton ceiling?
- Cotton ceiling is a noun.
- What is the plural of cotton ceiling?
- The plural of cotton ceiling is cotton ceilings.
Words near cotton ceiling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cotton ceiling (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cotton ceiling.wav.
Cite this entry: “cotton ceiling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cotton_ceiling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.