An Americanism dating back to 1870–75
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In many of the areas of the Cotton Belt, slaves were the majority of the population.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
The co-authors chose communities to study in Appalachia, South Texas and the southern Cotton Belt that were representative from the bottom 200 of their list.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 8, 2023
By 1915, they had spread across the Cotton Belt and wreaked havoc on the crop, leaving families destitute during the Great Depression.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 7, 2022
“The name Cotton Belt Route was considered, too, but Dixie was chosen to promote the South.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2020
She had gained time on me and was crossing the Cotton Belt Ry. tracks.
From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 1 by Work Projects Administration
In 2009, India’s agricultural export agency discovered wide-scale fraud in the country’s cotton belt, with entire villages certifying genetically modified cotton as organic.
From New York Times ● Feb. 13, 2022
Born into slavery in the Georgia cotton belt in 1818, she was seemingly destined for a life of hard labor and a death in obscurity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2020
It may foreshadow the discovery of other forgotten slave cemeteries as the city of Tallahassee’s boundaries edge northward into the county’s former cotton belt.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 14, 2020
Across the central cotton belt, especially in Telangana and Maharashtra, at-risk farmers were particularly impoverished and often lacked irrigation infrastructure that would stabilize cotton farming.
From Salon ● Dec. 15, 2019
Now, grain can be grown in the cotton belt of the South, and many Yankee farmers are making good money doing it.
From The Dollar Hen by Hastings, Milo M. (Milo Milton)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
