I am amazed of the ignorance of some people. Not everything is about you or your race. This is why we need to go back to the basics in school.
Wait a Cotton Picking Minute Meaning
Definition: Wait a gosh darn minute!
Origin of Cotton Picking Minute
Cotton-picking in this expression is a euphemism for a swear word, and it adds emphasis. People sometimes use this term in other cases, like keep your cotton-picking hands off of that. They use it when they want to use stronger language, but don’t want to use swear words. It usually stands in for the word damn.
Another use of cotton is keep your cotton picking hands off of me.
These phrases make more sense if you know a little about harvesting cotton. Picking cotton is a harsh, difficult task that leaves someone’s hands rough and calloused. Before the cotton gin or other mechanized approaches, this was done completely by hand, which left the workers hand extremely rough.
People of all races have picked cotton. All races. We have got to stop this nonsense.
The cotton gin doesn't pick cotton. It separates the seeds and debris from the raw picked cotton.
All the way to my wife and the 60s her family picked cotton. They sure are not black.
All this woke crap and sensitivity is just plan foolish nonsense. Stupidity.
I will never apologize for use of euphemisms.
“... but don’t want to use swear words. It usually stands in for the word damn.”
Correct. It’s much as when I say “Son of a biscuit-eater, you fixed it!” upon the occasion of my husband repairing something I thought was beyond repair. There are many such saying as this which when used in such a manner have no actual meaning other than being substitute words! If that phrase is suddenly taken to mean something else, can I no longer use it?
“Wait a cotton-picking minute” has been used for decades in different ways, many times to mean “stop what you are doing”, “hold that thought” or “hesitate before you act”. As in “Wait a cotton-picking minute before we try to do this. Let me think if this is the best thing to do”. “Cotton-picking” can be a replacement for “damn” or with the added words of “Wait-a” (as most commonly used) to mean just “Hold on”.
There is no telling how many words or phrases have been repurposed over the years and just become part of the lexicon with no one knowing the original reason for the word being used in such a manner.
For instance, the history of a word such as “gay”. That word has changed or had meanings added over the years that for some time people weren’t first aware of when they continued to use it in the then known manner. I hate the fact that it has been corralled into being a word you can’t say unless you use the proper connotation.
“We will have a gay old time” no longer has the same meaning as it previously did. We have to stop letting people tell us that there are words or phrases that some people cannot utter unless they use it in the current progressive manner.