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mattress

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈmætɹɪs//

A pad on which a person can recline and sleep, usually having an inner section of coiled springs covered with foam or other cushioning material then enclosed with cloth fabric.

noun

  1. 1

    A pad on which a person can recline and sleep, usually having an inner section of coiled springs covered with foam or other cushioning material then enclosed with cloth fabric.

  2. 2

    A form of retaining wall used to support foundations or an embankment

  3. 3

    A form of lagging, in particular for boilers.

    Spun glass mattresses are used for lagging the boiler, which has three Ross pop safety valves on the front ring.

    The boiler and firebox are lagged with a lightweight Fibreglass mattress.

Etymology

Etymology tree Arabic طَرَحَ (ṭaraḥa) Arabic مَطْرَح (maṭraḥ)bor. Old French matrasbor. Middle English materas English mattress From Middle English materas, from Old French matras, from Arabic مَطْرَح (maṭraḥ, “place where something is thrown”), from طَرَحَ (ṭaraḥa, “to throw”). Compare divan, from Persian via Turkish (both of Middle Eastern origin, due to the local custom of lying on padding on floor being foreign to Europeans).

verb

  1. 1

    To cover with a thick layer, like a mattress; to blanket.

    A comfortable litter of pine needles had mattressed the ground and spreading branches had been a canopy overhead.

Forms

plural
mattresses
past tense
mattressed
past participle
mattressed
present participle
mattressing
third person singular
mattresses
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).