Keywords

Cotton to It

Language, Politics

I didn’t even realize that cotton was a verb. From The American Heritage Dictionary:

To come to understand. Often used with to or onto: The German bosses . . . never cottoned to such changes” (N.R. Kleinfield).

The context in which I came across this is a joke, since it is the title of an article about an experiment involving political T-shirts:

T-Shirt Diversity? Bush Won’t Cotton to It.prather wearing a t-shirt• The question: Which presidential campaign better tolerates dissent?

The experiment: A college professor wears a Kerry-Edwards shirt to a rally for President Bush, then a Bush for President shirt to a John Kerry rally.

Result: Bush people make the subject remove his shirt, then give him the boot. The Kerry people don’t make a peep.

Read the whole account (scroll down for story).

Try the experiment yourself: Buy a Kerry T-shirt!

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