Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A bale of cotton; a commercial package consisting of cotton lint more or less tightly compressed, covered with bagging, and bound with ties. The bale differs in size, form, and covering in different countries. The standard American bale is of a square section, the faces 54 by 27 inches, and is intended to contain 500 pounds, but there is actually great variation in dimensions and density. Smaller and denser cylindrical bales, less subject to waste and loss by fire or rain, have come somewhat into use, and improvements of similar purpose have been attempted in the square bale.
Examples
“Phil did not get out of its way, for he could not; but, just as the animal was rolling upon him, a great wave lifted him high on its foam-white crest and hurled him against a cotton-bale.”
“South America sits on a cotton-bale, has a condor by her side, and at her feet are tropical fruits -- pineapples, bananas and brazil-nuts.”
“Nor, on the other hand, could any musketry have kept the English columns out of the cotton-bale breast-work; -- they had often in the Peninsula stormed stronger works than that, -- without faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet.”
“When the time approached for the completion of the cotton-bale gunboat I moved my family down, We followed the gunboat, but our Captain stopped at so many places to take on sugar and molasses that it was soon out of sight and hearing.”
“Fortunately, I did not allow this to escape me, or I should have been called "cotton-bale Parker" to this day.”
“The cotton-bale, the stevedores hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the screen of the coal-screener, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,”
“The cotton-bale, the stevedores hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,”
“A long pause precedes the last cry, 'La ilaha Illallah,' and the silence closes up on it, as the ram on the head of a cotton-bale.”
“One great objection to the cotton-bale bulwarks was the very inflammable nature of the material, since a red-hot shot from the enemy, or a bit of blazing wadding from a gun, would set it smouldering with a dense black smoke that drove the men from their guns until the bales could be thrown overboard; thus extinguishing the fire, but exposing the men to the fire of the enemy.”
“Them valises was packed as tight as a compressed cotton-bale.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cotton-bale’.
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Rognons of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for terms and phrases that don't fit into any of my other lists.
priorship, exigeant, refectory, reestablish, capper, reesed, quar, reprune, orificial, reaming-iron, terminist, terminism and 3097 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cotton-bale.
reesetee No, no. Cotton-bales go best with sweet sauces, of course. Nov 29, 2010
yarb Thanks h; I enjoyed that - one of your finer rognons. Nov 29, 2010
hernesheir I sat on the adjacent train tracks eating traditional southern Thanksgiving food from a styrofoam clamshell next to a shed with a hand-painted sign that said "coal". The shed sat next to a pile of the same, hand-picked from the tracks. There was gravy, and juice from the greens, but nothing that would compliment a cotton-bale. Nov 27, 2010
reesetee My thoughts exactly, yarb. Nov 27, 2010
yarb Did you find any gravy to go with them? Nov 25, 2010
hernesheir Many years ago, on Thanksgiving Day, travelling from FL to NYC I stopped to look for a meal in Dillon, SC and happened to see dozens of +/-500-lb (weight exactly declared on attached handwritten cardboard tags) cotton-bales inside a partially burned-out rail-side warehouse I'd found while exploring. Wonderful. Nov 25, 2010