pillow

Pluralpillows

Formspillows, pillowing, pillowed

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A soft, padded cushion that a person rests their head on in bed.

   The hotel left a chocolate on each pillow every evening.

   She stacked two pillows behind her back to read in bed.

   Similarcushion

   Note

   Behind the soft cushion lies a word about stuffing. Old English pyle came, by way of West Germanic, from Latin pulvinus "cushion," built on pulvis "dust, powder." The cushion was named for what filled it. English later borrowed the Latin word directly as pulvinus, a doublet. The bed is this sense's natural home: Ruskin's warrior in The Stones of Venice (1853) falls back "peacefully upon his pillow."

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any head support used for sleep, such as a neck pillow or a hard porcelain pillow.

   Many travelers carry a U-shaped pillow to keep the neck steady on flights.

   The exhibit displayed a hard porcelain pillow once used in place of a soft cushion.

   Similarheadrest

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To support or cradle something softly, as if resting it on a cushion.

   Travelers often pillow their heads on rolled jackets during long bus rides.

   He pillowed her cheek gently against the cushion.

   Similarrest, cradle, cushion

   Note

   The verb usually takes a head as its object, with on or upon for the resting place. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Lucy lies "her head pillowed upon her arm" (1834). Rebecca West, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942), writes "She had pillowed her head on her arm." The arm is the classic makeshift pillow. The participle pillowed, describing a sleeper's posture, is where the word feels most at home.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A rounded, bulbous mass of lava formed when molten rock erupts underwater and cools rapidly.

   Geologists mapped each pillow along the ancient seafloor ridge.

   The outcrop consisted of stacked pillows formed during an undersea eruption.

   Note

   A geologist's shorthand: pillow stands for pillow lava. A single rounded lobe is itself a pillow, so outcrops are described as stacks of pillows. The masses are typically basaltic and are shaped as lava chills rapidly on meeting water. For that reason, a field of them is read as evidence that the eruption happened under water.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A piece of metal or wood that forms a support to equalize pressure, such as a bearing brass or pillow block.

   A new pillow block was fitted to seat the rotating axle.

   The mechanics aligned both pillows before tightening the drive shaft.

   Similarbearing

   Note

   Machine design borrows the word for the block that carries a turning shaft and spreads its load evenly. Two near-synonyms travel with it. Brass names the bearing metal the block holds, and pillow block is the fuller name for the assembly. It is close kin to the socket of a pivot, since both are the seat a moving part rests in.

6. 6
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The socket that receives and supports the end of a pivot.

   The gate's pivot rested in a worn pillow that needed replacing.

   Old machines used iron pillows to seat their turning pivots.

   Similarsocket

7. 7
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A block fitted beneath the inner end of a bowsprit as support.

   Carpenters mortised a heavy pillow into the deck to seat the bowsprit.

   The vessel's pillows steadied the bowsprit against the pitching sea.

   Note

   Shipwrights' timber rather than bedding: the pillow sits beneath the heel, or inner end, of the bowsprit. It takes the spar's weight where it bears against the deck or the knightheads. Like the engineer's bearing block, the name pictures something solid cushioning a heavier, moving load.

8. 8
   noununcountable

   A plain, coarse variety of fustian cloth.

   The workman's jacket was stitched from heavy pillow that resisted wear.

   Bolts of coarse pillow filled the shelves of the draper's shop.

   Note

   The cloth, unlike the bedding and hardware senses, is a mass noun. A draper stocks bolts of pillow, not pillows. It names one plain, coarse grade of fustian, the kind of sturdy fabric suited to clothes meant to take hard wear.

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