Cotton Belt

American  

noun

1. (sometimes lowercase)  the part of the southern U.S. where cotton is grown, originally Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, but now often extended to include parts of Texas and California.

---

cotton belt British  

noun

1. a belt of land in the southeastern US that specializes in the production of cotton

---

Etymology

Origin of Cotton Belt

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

In many of the areas of the Cotton Belt, slaves were the majority of the population.

From The Wall Street Journal

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

Mr. Nichols’s traumatic death has shocked Memphis, and forced the capital of the old Southern Cotton Belt to reckon with a nightmare scenario that does not fit neatly into most narratives of racist violence: all five of the officers, who have been fired and indicted for crimes including second-degree murder, are Black.

From New York Times

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

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