cotton gin
Cotton gin (noun) means a machine that separates cotton fibres from their seeds, using rotating teeth or saws to pull the lint through a grid too narrow for the seeds to pass. Example: “The cotton gin could clean in a day what a worker took weeks to do by hand.”
How to use cotton gin
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA machine that pulls the seeds out of raw cotton.
Neutral. Encountered mainly in history teaching and in the textile industry.
To gin cotton is also a verb, so a ginner works at a gin ginning cotton.
Trace the full origin ↓Fill the gap
Can you complete this real example?
The _____ could clean in a day what a worker took weeks to do by hand.
Etymology
Gin here is a shortened form of engine, meaning a mechanical contrivance, and has nothing to do with the drink. The word engine descends from Latin ingenium 'skill, device'.
Synonyms
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Frequently asked questions
What did the cotton gin actually do?
It mechanically pulled cotton fibre away from the sticky seeds embedded in it, which had previously been slow hand work. This made short-staple cotton profitable to grow far inland, and the resulting boom in cotton acreage vastly increased the demand for enslaved labour in the American South.
Why is it called a gin if it has nothing to do with the drink?
Gin in this sense is simply a clipped form of the word engine, an old general term for a mechanical device. The spirit gin is an entirely separate word, taken from the Dutch name for juniper.
Did the cotton gin end slavery in the American South?
No, it did the opposite. By making cotton far more profitable to process, it expanded plantation agriculture and sharply increased the number of people held in slavery in the decades before the Civil War.
What is the meaning of cotton gin?
"cotton gin" (noun) means a machine that separates cotton fibres from their seeds, using rotating teeth or saws to pull the lint through a grid too narrow for the seeds to pass.