The seed of the cotton plant, valuable for its oil used in cooking and manufacturing.
Cotton (from Arabic qutun) + seed (from Old English sæd, from Proto-Germanic *sēdi-). Cottonseed became economically important only after the cotton gin was invented.
Cottonseed was nearly worthless before 1865, but then chemists discovered its oil was perfect for cooking and soap—suddenly the cotton industry had two profitable products instead of one!
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