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cotton-picking

British  

adjective

  1. slang (intensifier qualifying something undesirable)

    you cotton-picking layabout!

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Born in Oklahoma on “a little cotton-picking town between Tulsa and Muskogee,” Releford was raised on a farm by his parents, grandparents and uncle.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 27, 2026

Millions of people worked — for years in forced-labor campaigns — in the cotton-picking industry, which further sapped water resources.

From Seattle Times • Feb. 7, 2024

The cotton-picking season was over in the San Joaquin Valley, but the truck wouldn’t go, the money was running out and this farmworker family was living on fish tacos.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 2, 2017

One invention, from Macon, Mississippi, was a cotton-picking machine.

From Scientific American • Jan. 7, 2013

Our people had lived off the land and counted on cotton-picking and hoeing and chopping seasons to bring in the cash needed to buy shoes, clothes, books and light farm equipment.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou