Word.ws English Dictionary

cotton on to

cotton on to verb: to come to know or understand (something).

Verb

cotton on to (third-person singular simple present cottons on to, present participle cottoning on to, simple past and past participle cottoned on to)

  1. (slang) To come to know or understand (something).
    • Buuut the Kamchatka eventually showed up, with news: whilst the main fleet had almost triggered a war with the British Empire, she'd managed to outdo them all, by reporting that, not only had she fired three hundred shells in an engagement with three Japanese ships, but, in fact, had shot at a...2019 March 13, Drachinifel, 26:59 from the start, in The Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron - Voyage of the Damned, archived from the original on 29 Jan 2023
  2. (archaic, slang) Synonym of cotton to (“like, tolerate”).
    Synonyms:
    cotton to

Synonyms of cotton on to

Forms of cotton on to

third-person singular presentcottons on to
present participlecottoning on to
past participlecottoned on to
pastcottoned on to
alternative formcotton onto

Questions about cotton on to

What does cotton on to mean?
Cotton on to means to come to know or understand (something).
What part of speech is cotton on to?
Cotton on to is a verb.
What is the past tense of cotton on to?
The past tense of cotton on to is cottoned on to.

Words near cotton on to in the dictionary

  1. cotton mice
  2. cotton mill
  3. cotton mills
  4. cotton mouse
  5. cotton on
  6. cotton on to
  7. cotton onto
  8. cotton pad
  9. cotton pads
  10. cotton picker
  11. cotton pickers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cotton on to (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 on to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cotton_on_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.