the.com/cocoon
a self-built coffin where a caterpillar dissolves into goo and rebuilds itself as something with wings.
means A protective silk casing a caterpillar spins around itself to undergo metamorphosis, or, by extension, any snug enclosure that shelters and insulates someone.
from From French 'cocon', which traces back to Provençal 'coucoun' meaning eggshell or shell — a cousin of 'coque', the French word for shell. The deeper root is likely the Latin 'coccum', a berry or kernel, the small round thing wrapped tight in its own skin. English borrowed it in the 17th century, and only much later did we start using it figuratively for our blankets, our homes, and our hiding places.
- total liquefaction
- caterpillar digests itself into a cellular soup
- silk source
- spun from a single unbroken thread
- memory survives
- moths recall lessons learned as caterpillars
- silk industry
- one cocoon yields nearly a mile of thread
chrysalis of monarch butterfly — transformation stage where caterpillar reorganizes into adult butterfly over 10-14 days
silk cocoon bombyx mori — mulberry silkworm produces single thread of 300-900 meters used in textile production for millennia