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cushion

Pronunciation: /ˈkʊʃən/

The English word “cushion” has 17 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A soft mass of material stuffed into a cloth bag, used for comfort or support.
  2. A throw pillow.
  3. A thin, flat pad used on hard chairs and sometimes toilet seats.
  4. A pad on which gilders cut gold leaf.
  5. A mass of steam in the end of the cylinder of a steam engine to receive the impact of the piston.
  6. The lip around a table in cue sports which absorbs some of the impact of the billiard balls and bounces them back.
  7. The pillow used in making bone lace.
  8. An engraver's pad.
  9. The rubber of an electrical machine.
  10. A pad supporting a woman's hair.
  11. 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.
  12. Money kept in reserve.
  13. The dancer in the cushion dance who currently holds the cushion, or the dance itself.

verb

  1. To furnish with cushions.
  2. To seat or place on, or as on a cushion.
  3. To absorb or deaden the impact of.
  4. To conceal or cover up, as under a cushion.

Etymology

From Middle English quysshyn, from later Old French coissin (modern coussin), from Vulgar Latin *coxīnus (“seat pad”), derived from Latin coxa (“hip, thigh”) (with the suffix possibly after Latin pulvīnus (“pillow”)), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *koḱs- (“joint, limb”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.