英语词汇cotton to的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

cotton to. Cotton clings readily to many surfaces, and clung to the machines, clothing, and hair of the English weavers who worked with it in the 16th century. This clinging quality of cot- ton probably suggested the expression cotton to, “to like or be attracted to a person or thing.” Although an earlier phrase used the word in essentially the same sense, its first recorded use by itself is in an old English play (1605): “John a Nokes and John a Style and I cannot cotton.” Early technical processes of cloth manufacturing may have been responsible for the idea, as the O.E.D. points out, but it all amounts to the same thing— cotton sticking to something. No one has offered any proof that the expression derives from kowtow, or the French côté, “side,” or from the obsolete slang to cotton, “to perform coition.”

词汇	cotton to
词源	cotton to. Cotton clings readily to many surfaces, and clung to the machines, clothing, and hair of the English weavers who worked with it in the 16th century. This clinging quality of cot- ton probably suggested the expression cotton to, “to like or be attracted to a person or thing.” Although an earlier phrase used the word in essentially the same sense, its first recorded use by itself is in an old English play (1605): “John a Nokes and John a Style and I cannot cotton.” Early technical processes of cloth manufacturing may have been responsible for the idea, as the O.E.D. points out, but it all amounts to the same thing— cotton sticking to something. No one has offered any proof that the expression derives from kowtow, or the French côté, “side,” or from the obsolete slang to cotton, “to perform coition.”
随便看	bluemouths blue movies bluenose blue-nose certificate blue-pencil blue peter blue ribbon blues blue sailor blue-sky laws bluestockings blue streak blue-water sailor bluff bluff city blunderbuss blunt blurb blushing thigh of the aroused nymph bmw bmx bo boanerges boardwalk boat