cotton ball
1
9.9
- noun
- Specialized
:
bola de algodón
- To remove makeup, gently rub a cotton ball soaked in cleanser over your face.
Examples
-
She cleaned him with a moistened cotton ball.
Fiction book (1996) -
Hardy dabs at a spot on Evelyn's thigh with a cotton ball dipped in alcohol.
Fiction book (1998) -
She scrubbed vigorously at the baby's foot with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.
Fiction book (1998) -
The doctor applied antiseptic to the cut with a clean cotton ball.
-
She used a cotton ball to apply lotion to her dry skin.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound literally combines 'cotton' and 'ball', so a B1 learner who knows the words would likely infer a cotton-like round mass. However, the specific lexicalized sense as a fungal disease of cranberries is a specialized, domain-specific extension not fully predictable from the constituents alone, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The noun cotton ball comes from the way a fungus makes cranberries grow white, fluffy clumps that look like cotton balls on the fruit, so the name now means this 'disease'.