The word of the day for April 6th.
Today's word is cotton.
Cotton is a verb.
It's used with on or onto to mean to begin to understand something, to catch on.
Cotton used with to alone means to begin to like someone or something.
Here's the word used in a sentence from In the Arena,
Theodore Roosevelt in War, Peace, and Revolution by David S. Brown.
An insatiable reader, he enjoyed a wide range of literary acquaintances, some of whom Rudyard Kipling, Owen Wister,
and Joel Chandler Harris became personal friends,
and others, including Mark Twain, a man wholly without cultivation, he never quite cottoned to.
The noun cotton from an Arabic word first appeared in English in the 14th century.
The substance and the word that named it were soon both culturally prominent, so English did a very English thing to do.
It created a verb from the noun.
By the late 15th century, cotton could mean to form a fuzzy or downy surface on cloth.
This verb sense, as well as other cotton-related verb meanings, is a lexical dust bunny at this point.
But our modern-day uses spun from it.
By the mid-16th century, cotton could mean to go on prosperously, to develop well, to succeed.
The metaphor is not difficult to see, as cotton cloth with a nice nap has indeed developed well.
By the early 17th century, the verb had shifted again,
and cottoning was, as it still often is, about taking a liking to someone or something.