a. [f. COTTON sb. + -Y.]

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  1.  Covered with a soft down or fine hairy nap or pubescence like cotton-wool.

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1578.  Lyte, Dodoens, I. lxi. 88. With small, narrow, & very softe cottonie leaues.

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1611.  Cotgr., Lanugineux … Cottonie, downie, mossie.

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1693.  Evelyn, De la Quint. Compl. Gard., II. 142. The Cottony sides of their leaves.

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1804.  Med. Jrnl., XII. 558. Leaves … cottony underneath.

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1876.  Harley, Mat. Med., 415. Amental Exogens, with … numerous cottony seeds.

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  2.  Resembling cotton, of the nature of cotton; soft, downy and white like cotton.

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1664.  Evelyn, Sylva (1679), 28. Oaks bear also a knur, full of a cottony matter, of which they anciently made wick for their lamps and candles.

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1727.  Philip Quarll, 170. The Grass being of a soft cottony Nature.

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a. 1851.  Audubon, in Coues, Birds N. W. (1874), 74. Lined with the cottony or silky substance that falls from the cotton-wood tree.

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