How long is a cotton picking minute? (page 3)

moanzy

That's sort of like measuring a "touch", a "smidgen" or a "dash".

Who the heck knows!

Moanzy

Marvin Shilmer

Cotton-Pickin Minute?

To say, "Now wait just a cotton-pickin minute!" is an objection that says you want to offer a rebuttal by way of explanation. The term is a demand for equal time.

Marvin Shilmer

Mary

is a "cotten picking minute" a "bored" minute that feels like a long time or is it a "busy" minute that seems to fly by?

Elsewhere, I believe that a "cotten picking minute" is 70 or 80 years, or a "generation".

hillbilly

Much much, shorter than a coon's age.

By the way, I love how folks paint southerner's with such a broad brush of racism. There are more KKK members in Michigan than just about any other place I know of.

~Hill

Some of my forefathers were farmers. I remember once as a very young lad picking cotton by hand and asking my Uncle--a cotton farmer--how long it take to fill the bag strapped over our shoulder, because to me it seem to take forever. (In fact I don't know that I ever completely filled one of those huge bags, though I watched many "field hands" do just that.) He replied, "It takes as long as it takes." I believe his response relates to the term "cotton-pickin minute" so that the expression "Now wait a cotton-pickin minute!" takes on the meaning of demanding as much time as it takes share the fact of a matter.

Marvin Shilmer

lonelysheep

Hill,

Much much, shorter than a coon's age.

what do you mean by this?

EvilForce

Just as a curiousity...how many on this board are northern's vs. southerners????

South of the Mason Dixon line please...and if you don't know where that is answer this question to determine...

If you walk into a resturant in your city and order an iced tea and the waitress brings it to you...if it is already sweet tea, you are in the south. If you must add sweetner you are in the north.

jeanniebeanz

"A COON'S AGE - Meaning 'a very long time,' a coon's age is an Americanism recorded in 1843 and probably related to the old English expression 'in a crow's age,' meaning the same. The American term is an improvement, if only because the raccoon usually lives longer -- up to 13 years in the wild - than the crow." From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997), Page 168.

lilbit

If you walk into a resturant in your city and order an iced tea and the waitress brings it to you...if it is already sweet tea, you are in the south. If you must add sweetner you are in the north.

I MISS SWEET TEA!!!!!!!!!!! they've never heard of it here in nevada.

Ok Yall having spent most of my life in Georgia. Ive heard the term " wait just a cotton pickin minute " plenty of times. I have always understood it to be a euphemism " for wait a god damn minute" because anybody from the south knows that you just dont say GD

one of my baptist friends used to slug me in the arm every time I said it

hillbilly

I can see you are from Jersey.... Not only is there no "sweet tea" in Jersey , it will likely be some sort of instant tea......

Yuk.

~Hill

How long is a cotton picking minute?

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