Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A machine used to divest cotton of its husk and other superfluous parts. See
cotton-gin .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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In the _saw-gin_, the cotton is placed in a receiver, one side of which consists of a grating of parallel wires, about an eighth of an inch apart; circular saws, revolving on a common axis between these wires, entangle in their teeth the cotton, and draw it from the seeds, which are too large to pass between the wires.
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Things work round, and the roller-gin is now the better machine, having in the most perfected processes supplanted the saw-gin.
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. Various
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While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting, tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is suitable for working it.
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Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794 revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our
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It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in
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To borrow statistics from the Commissioners 'Report, a native woman can, with a roller-gin, turn out, say, nearly 3 lbs. of clean cotton from 12 lbs. of seed-cotton; while the industrious Japanese, who have brought over modern machines of the saw-gin type, can obtain 35 lbs. of clean cotton from
Corea or Cho-sen The Land of the Morning Calm Arnold Henry Savage Landor 1894
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It changed the very history of the country when, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the saw-gin, by which a slave could clean 1,000 pounds of cotton per day.
History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) Elisha Benjamin Andrews 1880
bilby commented on the word saw-gin
I'm here for gin, to be honest.
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word saw-gin
Do you know, I think gin is what led me to this old wordie site in the first place. See, I'd been at a pesto-making party with a bunch of former English professors, and they were trying to figure out the etymology for cotton gin. The hosts had a compact edition of the OED, but it's so hard to read those entries--even with the magnifying glass--so I was looking it up for them on my phone. It was probably yarb's comments on gin that made me think I wanted to read more here. But I forgot about the site for a while. Eventually I got fascinated by something else--peacock mantis shrimp probably--and someone over on Twitter who followed wordie and wordnik reminded me this place existed. When I came back, I found bilby's animal-identity-crisis list, &c., and the rest, as they say, was history.
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word saw-gin
Also, I was just scrolling past this word again and read it as "slaw-gin" (like sloe gin, maybe).
December 17, 2018