[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To furnish with a cushion or cushions.
1820. W. Irving, Sketck-Bk., Country Church (1865), 124. The congregation … sat in pews, sumptuously lined and cushioned.
transf. 1890. Illust. Lond. News, Christm. No. 11/1. An eyot cushioned with luxurious grass.
b. To pad or protect as with cushions. Also fig.
1836–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat., II. 158/1. [The] surfaces [of the scapula] are cushioned with muscles.
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, II. xxxi. No persuasive blandness could cushion him against the shock.
2. To rest, seat or set (a person or thing) upon a cushion; to support, or prop up with cushions.
1735–8. Bolingbroke, On Parties, xii. (R.). Instead of inhabiting palaces, and being cushioned up in thrones.
1847–8. H. Miller, First Impr., iv. (1859), 150. The eye never slides off the landscape, but cushions itself upon it with a sense of security and repose.
1860. Pusey, Min. Proph., 183. Propped and cushioned up on both sides.
3. fig. To suppress (anything) quietly; to take no notice of it.
1818. Bp. J. Milner, in F. C. Husenbeth, Life (1862), 350. The South and West thought it prudent to cushion it.
1835. Tait’s Mag., II. 273. The book … has been much less talked of than it deserves to be. We trust there is no desire in certain circles to cushion it.
1849. C. Brontë, Shirley, xxviii. There my courage failed: I preferred to cushion the matter.
1887. Pall Mall Gaz., 23 Aug., 1/1. The way in which complaints are cushioned in official quarters is startling.
4. Billiards. To place or leave (a ball) close to, or resting against, the cushion. b. intr. (In U.S.) To make the ball hit the cushion before cannoning or after contact with one of the balls. Cent. Dict.
5. To deaden the stroke of (the piston) by a cushion of steam; to form into a cushion of steam.
1850. [see CUSHIONING].
1859. Rankine, Steam Engine, 420. The quantity of steam confined or ‘cushioned’ is just sufficient to fill the clearance at the initial pressure p1.
Hence Cushioning vbl. sb. (spec. in Mech.: see quots. and cf. CUSHION sb. 3 d.)
1850. Pract. Mech. Jrnl., III. 104. This cushioning of the pistons, and the gradual restraining of the momentum.
1887. J. A. Ewing, in Encycl. Brit., XXII. 501/2. (Steam-engine), Admission before the end of the back stroke … together with the compression of steam left in the cylinder when the exhaust port closes, produces the mechanical effect of cushioning.
