cushion

noun cushions

1. countable, uncountable A soft mass of material stuffed into a cloth bag, used for comfort or support. “There the cause of death was soon ascertained ; the victim of this daring outrage had been stabbed to death from ear to ear with a long, sharp instrument, in shape like an antique stiletto, which […] was subsequently found under the cushions of the hansom.[…]”
2. Commonwealth, countable, uncountable A throw pillow.
3. countable, uncountable A thin, flat pad used on hard chairs and sometimes toilet seats.
4. countable, uncountable A pad on which gilders cut gold leaf.
5. countable, uncountable A mass of steam in the end of the cylinder of a steam engine to receive the impact of the piston.
6. countable, uncountable The lip around a table in cue sports which absorbs some of the impact of the billiard balls and bounces them back.
7. countable, uncountable The pillow used in making bone lace.
8. countable, uncountable An engraver's pad.
9. countable, historical, uncountable The rubber of an electrical machine.
10. countable, historical, uncountable A pad supporting a woman's hair.
11. countable, figuratively, uncountable a sufficient quantity of an intangible object (like points or minutes) to allow for some of those points, for example, to be lost without hurting one's chances for successfully completing an objective. Wisla made a bright start to the second half and Fulham keeper Mark Schwarzer was twice called into action, first saving Gervasio Nunez's deflected 20-yard effort and then smothering Gargula's free-kick. But Fulham soon had the cushion of a third goal after more outstanding build-up play.
12. countable, figuratively, uncountable Money kept in reserve. The entry-level wages are abominable, still something like $15,000 a year. You can't possibly be a working class person and live on that in New York City. You need some kind of family "cushion." So what you'll find in publishing is middle class professionals, people who see material about working cl
13. countable, historical, uncountable The dancer in the cushion dance who currently holds the cushion, or the dance itself. But of these kind of second Courses I am the onely Cook; though yet those ordinary practises of our Feasts, as choosing a King, throwing Dice, drinking Healths, trouling it Round, dancing the Cushion and the like, were not invented by the seven Wise Men but my Self, and that too for the common pleas

Similar: cushion

verb cushions · cushioning · cushioned

1. To furnish with cushions. to cushion a sofa

   Similar: nestle, pad

2. To seat or place on, or as on a cushion. How many doughty monarchs, in later and more polite ages, would have slept in cottages, and have worked in falls, instead of inhabiting palaces, and being cushioned up in thrones, if this rule of government had continued in force ?
3. figuratively To absorb or deaden the impact of. to cushion a blow

   Similar: buffer

4. figuratively, transitive To conceal or cover up, as under a cushion.