Definition of "cotton-spinner" []

• One who spins cotton; a manufacturer of cotton thread. (noun)
• An echinoderm, Holothuria for-skali: so named from the adhesive white threads (Cuvierian organs) which are shot out when the animal is irritated. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Glasgow, attending lectures in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one."
• "One editorialist wrote: Robert Owen, Esq., a benevolent cotton-spinner ... conceives that all human beings are so many plants which have been out of the earth for a few thousand years, and require to be reset."
• "Some measures of relief were carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr. Sadler, [16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours"