cotton on

Questions about cotton on

What does cotton on mean?

cotton on means "understand, usually after some initial difficulty".

What is another word for cotton on?

Close synonyms include catch on, get wise, get onto, tumble, latch on. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is cotton on a common word?

cotton on is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.