cushion

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A pad or pillow with a soft filling, used for resting, reclining, or kneeling.
• noun Something resilient used as a rest, support, or shock absorber.
• noun A mat placed or attached beneath carpeting to provide softness and increase durability.
• noun A padlike body part.
• noun Games The rim bordering the playing surface of a billiard table.
• noun A pillow used in lacemaking.
• noun Something that mitigates or relieves an adverse effect.
• transitive verb To provide with a cushion.
• transitive verb To place or seat on a cushion.
• transitive verb To cover or hide (something) with or as if with a cushion.
• transitive verb To protect from impacts or other disturbing effects.
• transitive verb To mitigate the effects of; absorb the shock of.

from The Century Dictionary.

• In machinery, to compress (exhaust-steam or other motive fluid) by closing the exhaust-outlet of a cylinder before the piston completes its traverse.
• noun An expansion at the lower extremity of a grape-vine from which a part of its roots spring.
• noun Same as saddle, 3 .
• noun In pianoforte-making, a pad or roll of felt placed under the ends of the keys to prevent noise. See cut under pianoforte.
• noun Same as coronet, 6.
• noun A pool formed by a low dam or obstruction immediately below a higher dam to prevent erosion or destructive effect of the water which falls over the higher dam or hydraulic work.
• noun A bag-like case of cloth or leather, usually of moderate size, filled with feathers, wool, or other soft material, used to support or ease some part of the body in sitting or reclining, as on a chair or lounge. See pillow.
• noun Something resembling a cushion in structure, softness, elasticity, use, or appearance; especially, something used to counteract a sudden shock, jar, or jolt, as in a piece of mechanism.
• noun The rubber of an electrical machine. See rubber.
• noun The padded side or rim of a billiard-table.
• noun The head of a bit-stock. See brace, 14.
• noun In machinery, a body of air or steam which serves, under pressure, as an elastic check or buffer; specifically, steam left in the cylinder of an engine to serve as an elastic check for the piston. The cushion is made by closing the exhaust-outlet an instant before the end of the stroke, or by opening the inlet for live steam before the stroke is finished.
• noun In zoology, a pulvillus.
• noun In botany, the enlargement at or beneath the insertion of many leaves, a special mobile organ. Also called pulvinus.
• noun In architecture, the echinus of a capital.
• noun The woolsack.
• To seat on or as on a cushion or cushions.
• To cover or conceal with or as with a cushion; furnish with a cushion or cushions, in any sense of that word: as, to cushion a seat; to cushion a carriage.
• . To put aside or suppress.
• In billiards, to make the cue-ball hit the cushion, either before it touches any other ball or after contact with the object-ball.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To seat or place on, or as on a cushion.
• transitive verb To furnish with cushions.
• transitive verb To conceal or cover up, as under a cushion.
• transitive verb a dead-stroke hammer. See under Dead-stroke.
• noun A case or bag stuffed with some soft and elastic material, and used to sit or recline upon; a soft pillow or pad.
• noun Anything resembling a cushion in properties or use.
• noun a pad on which gilders cut gold leaf.
• noun a mass of steam in the end of the cylinder of a steam engine to receive the impact of the piston.
• noun the elastic edge of a billiard table.
• noun A riotous kind of dance, formerly common at weddings; -- called also cushion dance.
• noun (Arch.) A name given to a form of capital, much used in the Romanesque style, modeled like a bowl, the upper part of which is cut away on four sides, leaving vertical faces.
• noun (Zoöl.) a pentagonal starfish belonging to Goniaster, Astrogonium, and other allied genera; -- so called from its form.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A soft mass of material stuffed into a cloth bag, used for comfort or support; for sitting on, kneeling on, resting one's head on etc.
• noun Something acting as a cushion, especially to absorb a shock or impact.
• noun sports, billiards, snooker, pool The lip around a table in cue sports which absorbs some of the impact of the billiard balls and bounces them back.
• noun figuratively 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 objcetive.
• verb to provide a soft pillow cushion
• verb to absorb or deaden the impact of something