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Chris -- 2018-04-11
http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/d … 486122687/
”..all I said is that the sittuation is cotton dry…”
Well, come on. How many times can one be expected to have written cut-and-dried before? I love the way “cotton dry” conveys the sense of something really dry while completely removing the finality of “cut and dried”.
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Welcome to the Forum, savvo.
That’s a nice find you’ve got there. The reshaped cotton dry is essentially homophonous with the original cut and dried, and the idea of cotton as something dry is abroad (see below). Also, like many reshaped idioms, cut and dried is associated with a rural lifestyle that is becoming increasingly unfamiliar.
Strangely, as you suggest, cotton dry does not obviously suggest finality the way cut and dried does. I wonder if the imagery has shifted from cutting timber or hay to doing the laundry; in that case, dry (cotton) clothing would be the final product, just as dried timber is the nearly final product, ready for cutting into lumber.
It turns out to be very difficult to search for additional examples, for two reasons. First, Google returns many coincidental strings of “cotton dry”, such as these.
100% Cotton: Dry Clean or Hand Wash
www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?t=68874
Ultracloth Cotton Dry Wipes Medical Equipment and Nursing Supplies
www.medipost.co.uk/skin-cleansing-care- … 9_855.html
Also, there is an unrelated idiom, cotton dry “as dry as (boles of) cotton.”
When you say dry mouth, are you talking like cotton dry when you mouth has a hard time staying moist with saliva?
www.healthboards.com/boards/archive/ind … 15766.html
The mouth is “cotton†dry (this is called Xerostoma) or sticky due to the thickening of the saliva.
http://www.allaboutarthritis.com/AllAbo … rticle.htm
The example from savvo seems to mean not “very dry”, but “definitely settled.”
I did not say that the law supports one or the other position, all I said is that the sittuation is cotton dry, if you don’t sign all copy and usage rights over to me, you will not be taking pictures of my work! Simple!
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well, the finality might come when something is completely dry—and then of course, you’re done drying it (assuming that drying it was the goal).
Dry the way only a 100% cotton towel can dry; or dry the way only cotton can feel dry.
Make that a metaphor—”as far as you can go, no more to be done”—and you’ve got an eggcorn!
(and yes, welcome savvo)
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I could only find one example of “cotton dry” on the web. It’s in a German fanzine for punk/hardcore/underground music. In a band review article (http://www.trust-zine.de/boy-sets-fire-74-2-99/), the author, writing in a German sprinkled with English expressions, says
“ich bin ja nicht so blöd, als daß ich keine antwort auf diese frage hätte. but it´s not that cotton dry.”
The writer is discussing the topic of smoking. Apparently some critics have questioned how those who are so politically engaged can smoke. The English interjection in the sentence is the beginning of the writer’s retort to his critics. The retort goes on in German saying “ich meine,” “that is,” and explaining why the practice of smoking, like many of our social adaptions, is more complicated than it seems. So “cotton dry” is used by the writer to convey a meaning similar to “cut and dried.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Rats, I thought I had found a new nonce.
The point is, this is not cotton dry. This is not a good argument
skeptical blog
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