Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a general term of abuse, second-rate, vulgar, insignificant.

[1853		S. Northup Twelve Years A Slave 87: She was a beauty — a picture — a doll [...] None of your thick-lipped, bullet-headed, cotton-picking niggers].
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 32: Where’s them cotton-picking sacks?
1949		(con. 1943–5) A. Murphy To Hell and Back (1950) 48: Okay, gourd-head. Get that cotton-picking butt off the ground.
1953–54		Mad mag. Dec.–Jan. 13: Git your cotton pickin’ hands off that drumstick.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 16: Freddy [...] yelled at them to go fuck their mothers, ya cottonpickin bastards.
1971		T. Rhone Smile Orange I i: You cotton-picking son of a gun!
1999		P. Temple Black Tide (2012) [ebook] Not so much out of the square [...] as out of your cotton-picking mind.
2001		(con. 1975–6) E. Little Steel Toes 117: Cut on me? Are you outta your cottonpickin’ mind?

2. a euph. for damned adj.

1953		J.L. Herlihy ‘Sleep of Baby Filbertson’ Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1964) 14: In Santa Fe there’d been too much cotton-pickin’ sunshine.
1957		(con. 1944) A. Myrer Big War 286: He saved my cotton-picking ass.
1966		‘Tom Pendleton’ Iron Orchard (1967) 148: I haven’t lost a cotton-pickin’ thing in Odessa.
1974		D. Goines Daddy Cool (1997) 112: You must be out of your cotton-pickin’ mind!
1984		Atlanta Journal 2 Sept. n.p.: Let’s just forget about the whole cotton-pickin’ thing [R].
2000		Guardian 14 Nov. 22: I about had a cotton-pickin’ stroke. I hollered for my wife and I said, ‘The dadburned ballots are still in the car’.