Word.ws English Dictionary

cotton to

cotton to verb: to like; approve of, accept, or tolerate.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To like; approve of, accept, or tolerate.
    • Her heart's as hard as taxes, and as bad; / She does not even cotton to her dad.1858, Andrew Halliday, Frederick Lawrence, Kenilworth
    • “The fellow is an absolute outsider, anyone can see that. He’s got a great black beard, and wears patent leather boots in all weathers! But the mater cottoned to him at once, took him on as secretary—you know how she’s always running a hundred societies?”1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 7

cotton to meaning in Bengali

cotton to in Bengali

পছন্দ করা, অনুমোদন করা, গ্রহণ করা, সহ্য করা

Forms of cotton to

third-person singular presentcottons to
present participlecottoning to
past participlecottoned to
pastcottoned to

Origin of cotton to

According to Michael Quinion of World Wide Words, "It has plausibly been suggested it came from the use of mixtures of cotton and other fibres in clothing. In the early 1800s, to cotton to somebody implied that you were drawn or attached to that person. It may be that the idea here is how well a thread of cotton sticks to the surface of cloth."

Questions about cotton to

What does cotton to mean?
Cotton to means to like; approve of, accept, or tolerate.
What is cotton to in Bengali?
Cotton to in Bengali is পছন্দ করা, অনুমোদন করা, গ্রহণ করা. See Cotton to meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is cotton to?
Cotton to is a verb.
What is the past tense of cotton to?
The past tense of cotton to is cottoned to.

Words near cotton to in the dictionary

  1. cotton strippers
  2. cotton swab
  3. cotton swabs
  4. cotton thistle
  5. cotton thistles
  6. cotton to
  7. cotton velvet
  8. cotton velvets
  9. cotton wax
  10. Cotton Whig
  11. Cotton Whigs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cotton to (page history and authors); cotton to (Bengali Wiktionary) (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 to.ogg.

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