cushion

plural cushions

1. countableuncountableA 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.[…]”

   1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Tremarn Case”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020

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   There were many wooden chairs for the bulk of his visitors, and two wicker armchairs with red cloth cushions for superior people. From the packing-cases had emerged some Indian clubs,[…], and all these articles[…] made a scattered and untidy decoration that Mrs. Clough assiduously dusted and greatly cherished.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   1. CommonwealthcountableuncountableA throw pillow.
   2. countableuncountableA thin, flat pad used on hard chairs and sometimes toilet seats.
2. Something acting as a cushion, especially to absorb a shock or impact.
   1. countableuncountableA pad on which gilders cut gold leaf.
   2. countableuncountableA mass of steam in the end of the cylinder of a steam engine to receive the impact of the piston.
   3. countableuncountableball gamesThe lip around a table in cue sports which absorbs some of the impact of the billiard balls and bounces them back.
   4. countableuncountableThe pillow used in making bone lace.
   5. countableuncountableAn engraver's pad.
   6. countablehistoricaluncountableThe rubber of an electrical machine.
   7. countablehistoricaluncountableA pad supporting a woman's hair.
3. countablefigurativelyuncountablea 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.

   It will most likely not alter the destination of the league title, which still seems bound for City, who retain an 11-point cushion at the top

   2021 March 7, David Hytner, “Manchester United catch City cold as Fernandes and Shaw end winning run”, in The Guardian

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   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.

   2011 November 3, Arindam Rej, “Fulham 4-1 Wisla Krakow”, in BBC Sport

   1. countablefigurativelyuncountablebusinessMoney kept in reserve.

      Interest coverage is important because it is an indicator of how much cushion a company has in making its interest payments.

      2007, Belverd Needles, Marian Powers, Financial Accounting: Media Enhanced, page 826

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      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 class people as "foreign."

      1990 February 4, Pam Mitchell, Valerie Miller, “Skepticism, Steel Mills And Everyday Stories”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 8

      If one of the banks has a significant enough cushion of capital and a strong enough balance sheet, then it would not experience a bank run, and the domino effect in panel A would not have occurred.

      2013, Stijn Claessens, Kirsten Forbes, International Financial Contagion, page 85

4. countablehistoricaluncountableThe dancer in the cushion dance who currently holds the cushion, or the dance itself.

   In reference to a nuptial feast, the cushion dance at weddings is thus mentioned in the Apophthegms of King James, the Earl of Worcester and others (1658): “At last when the Masque was ended and Time had brought in the Supper, the Cushion led the Dance out of the Parlour into the Hall;”

   1877, John Brand, Henry Ellis, Observations on Popular Antiquities, page 394

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   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 pleasure of Mankind.

   1668, Desiderius Erasmus, translated by John Wilson, edited by Helen Mary Allen, The Praise of Folly, published 1913, page 35

   The young man advances to the fiddler, drops a penny in the pot, and gives it to one of his companions. Cushion then dances round the room, followed by the pot, and when they again reach the fiddler, the cushion says, in a sort of recitative, accompanied by the music, 'This dance it will no farther go.'

   1836, George Dubourg, The Violin, page 21

present singular third person cushions · participle present cushioning · participle past cushioned · past cushioned

1. To furnish with cushions.

   to cushion a sofa

   Synonyms: 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 ?

   1734, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, A Dissertation on Parties

3. figurativelyTo absorb or deaden the impact of.

   to cushion a blow

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   […]the development of popular interest in Parliament made it less possible for the Privy Council in Dublin to cushion a bill which the Commons had presented to the Lord Lieutenant[…]

   1903, Edward Porritt, “Poynings' Law”, in The Unreformed House of Commons, volume II, page 429

   And then I’d strip the message back to a basic sentence, not cushion it with an apology (an apology – from me!) or explain why I wanted the antisocial behaviour to stop.

   2024 July 27, Hannah Ewens, “‘Do you mind listening to that with headphones?’ How one little phrase revolutionised my commute”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: buffer

4. figurativelytransitiveTo conceal or cover up, as under a cushion.