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Bolster   /bˈoʊlstər/   Listen
verb
Bolster  v. t.  (past & past part. bolstered; pres. part. bolstering)  
1.
To support with a bolster or pillow.
2.
To support, hold up, or maintain with difficulty or unusual effort; often with up. "To bolster baseness." "Shoddy inventions designed to bolster up a factitious pride."



noun
Bolster  n.  
1.
A long pillow or cushion, used to support the head of a person lying on a bed; generally laid under the pillows. "And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster, This way the coverlet, another way the sheets."
2.
A pad, quilt, or anything used to hinder pressure, support any part of the body, or make a bandage sit easy upon a wounded part; a compress. "This arm shall be a bolster for thy head."
3.
Anything arranged to act as a support, as in various forms of mechanism, etc.
4.
(Saddlery) A cushioned or a piece part of a saddle.
5.
(Naut.)
(a)
A cushioned or a piece of soft wood covered with tarred canvas, placed on the trestletrees and against the mast, for the collars of the shrouds to rest on, to prevent chafing.
(b)
Anything used to prevent chafing.
6.
A plate of iron or a mass of wood under the end of a bridge girder, to keep the girder from resting directly on the abutment.
7.
A transverse bar above the axle of a wagon, on which the bed or body rests.
8.
The crossbeam forming the bearing piece of the body of a railway car; the central and principal cross beam of a car truck.
9.
(Mech.) The perforated plate in a punching machine on which anything rests when being punched.
10.
(Cutlery)
(a)
That part of a knife blade which abuts upon the end of the handle.
(b)
The metallic end of a pocketknife handle.
11.
(Arch.) The rolls forming the ends or sides of the Ionic capital.
12.
(Mil.) A block of wood on the carriage of a siege gun, upon which the breech of the gun rests when arranged for transportation.
Bolster work (Arch.), members which are bellied or curved outward like cushions, as in friezes of certain classical styles.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bolster" Quotes from Famous Books



... II, but the French continued to rule until 1954 when they were defeated by Communist forces under Ho Chi MINH, who took control of the North. US economic and military aid to South Vietnam grew through the 1960s in an attempt to bolster the government, but US armed forces were withdrawn following a cease-fire agreement in 1973. Two years later, North Vietnamese forces overran the South. Economic reconstruction of the reunited country has ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... are to be entrusted, with a list, the same as is done with plate. Tickets of parchment with the family name, numbered, and specifying what bed it belongs to, should be sewed on each feather bed, bolster, pillow, and blanket. Knives, forks, and house cloths are often deficient: these accidents might be obviated, if an article at the head of every list required the former to be produced whole or broken, and the marked part of the linen, though all the others should be ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... do so. She lay for a minute in his arms, her head bent down, and her face hidden, while he looked not so much at her as above her. His eyes wandered over the mass of her dark-brown wavy hair that Mrs Flint said was not wavy by nature, but crimped to make her look like a Blandamer, and so bolster up her father's nonsensical pretensions. His eyes took full account of that wave and the silken fineness of her dark-brown hair, and then looked vaguely out beyond till they fell on the great flower-picture that ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... offers which he was making. He knew that the German peace offers were merely an attempt on the part of the civil government of Germany to avert a resumption of ruthlessness at sea; that they were mere gestures on the part of the German Government made to bolster up the morale of the German people and that these German offers did not indicate the real desire for peace on equitable terms, as subsequent events showed, but that they were the terms of peace of a nation which thought itself the victor, and, therefore, in a position ruthlessly ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... to my knowledge, that's taken up by three lodgers already. (After a pause, in which the rest seem disconcerted.) I have hit it. Don't you think, Stingo, our landlady could accommodate the gentlemen by the fire-side, with——three chairs and a bolster? ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith


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