mattress

Pluralmattresses

Formsmattresses, mattressing, mattressed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A padded support for sleeping, typically built around an inner layer of coiled springs wrapped in foam or other cushioning and enclosed in fabric.

   The hotel replaced every mattress in the building last spring.

   A good mattress should support your spine while you sleep.

   Note

   The bed's name came to Europe from the Arabic-speaking world. Middle English materas came through Old French from Arabic maṭraḥ, "place where something is thrown," from ṭaraḥa, "to throw." Divan made a similar journey from Persian through Turkish. Both reflect a Middle Eastern custom of lying on padding laid on the floor, one that was foreign to Europeans. At root, a mattress is something thrown down, not a piece of built furniture.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To cover something with a thick layer, in the manner of a blanket or padding.

   Workers mattress the slope with brushwood to slow the erosion.

   Fallen leaves mattressed the path that wound through the woods.

   Similarblanket, carpet, cover

   Note

   The verb turns the bed back into a landscape. In Andrew R. M. Patterson's A planet through a field of stars (1997), pine needles have mattressed the ground while spreading branches form a canopy overhead. The verb is transitive, and its subject can be the soft layer itself rather than a person laying it down. The forms keep the spelling unchanged: mattressed, mattressing.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A type of retaining structure used to support foundations or to hold back an embankment.

   Engineers installed a concrete mattress beneath the pier to spread the load.

   A fascine mattress was sunk along the riverbank to protect the embankment.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A form of insulating lagging, used in particular to cover boilers.

   The engineer checked that the mattress around the boiler was still intact.

   A worn mattress lets heat leak away and wastes fuel.

   Similarlagging, jacket, blanket

   Note

   Railway engineering kept this sense busy. The Railway Magazine in 1941 describes spun glass mattresses lagging a locomotive boiler, and in 1951 the British Railways Britannia class has its boiler and firebox lagged with a lightweight Fibreglass mattress. The usual construction is passive: a boiler is lagged with a mattress. The word counts like any noun, so an engine can carry several mattresses.

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