verb (common).—To take a fancy to; to unite with; to agree with. In the last sense it is found occasionally in the Elizabethan writers, and is American by survival. [As regards derivation, it comes from the Welsh cytuno, to agree, to consent.]
Some French analogues are:—Avoir un béguin pour quelqu’un and avoir un pépin pour une femme; one who COTTONS TO another is by students called un colleur; while concubinage by sheer force of habit is damned as le collage.
1582. STANYHURST, Æneis, p. 19 (ARBER).
| If this geare COTTEN, what wight wyl yeelde to myn aulters | |
| Bright honor and Sacrifice. |
1605. The Play of Stucley, I., 290. John a Nokes and John a Style and I cannot COTTON.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends (The Bagman’s Dog).
| For when once Madam Fortune deals out her hard raps, | |
| It ’s amazing to think | |
| How one ‘COTTONS’ to Drink! |
1846. Punch, vol. III., p. 12. I agree in the words of Mrs. Judy, who says, ‘My dear, I hope one day to see Peel and Cobden COTTON together.’
1864. Derby Day, p. 152. ‘You stop here and COTTON UP TO the gipsies,’ exclaimed Charley Brickwood.
1880. OUIDA, Moths, ch. vii. ‘Ride? Ah! That’s a thing I don’t COTTON TO anyhow,’ said Miss Fuschia Leach, who had found that her talent did not lie that way.
TO DIE WITH COTTON IN ONE’S EARS, phr. (obsolete).—See quots.
1821. P. EGAN, Tom and Jerry (ed 1890), p. 92. Many of the most hardened and desperate offenders, from the kindness, attention, and soothing conduct of the Rev. Mr. Cotton [the chaplain at Newgate, 1821], who is indefatigable in administering consolation to their troubled minds, have become the most sincere penitents.
1864. Athenæum, 29 Oct., No. 1931. Review of Hotten’s The Slang Dictionary ‘When a late chaplain of Newgate [Rev. Mr. Cotton] used to attend poor wretches to the scaffold, standing by their side to the last moment, they were said to ‘DIE WITH COTTON IN THEIR EARS!’ Let us add here, that Rowe invented the phrase ‘launched into eternity,’ to signify the simple but solemn matter of hanging.
This was by no means the only instance of a popular punning allusion to the name of Cotton. The Jesuit Father Coton, having obtained a great ascendency over Henri IV., it was remarked by that monarch’s subjects that, unfortunately, ‘HIS EARS WERE STUFFED WITH COTTON.’
