Definition of "cotton on" [cotton on]

• To realize; come to understand. (verb)

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• "Standing beside the spring was a wishing tree, an old hawthorn, Crataegus turkestanica, a tattered thing, decorated with hundreds of ribbons, shreds of bleached, coloured cloth, even a tiny prayer, rolled tightly in a scroll and hung by cotton on a branch."
• "The soft skies, the balmy climate, the richly-scented flowers, the song-birds, the delicious fruits, their own loved home, the band of cherished friends -- these were their South, rather than the hideous machine of human slavery, rolling out its bales of cotton on one side and oozing out its stream of blood and death on the other."
• "She turned away, the sun-blanched cotton on her shoulders heavy as another skin."