allay vs cushion

allay

verb
  • To alleviate; to abate; to mitigate. 

  • To make quiet or put at rest; to pacify or appease; to quell; to calm. 

noun
  • Alleviation; abatement; check. 

cushion

verb
  • To absorb or deaden the impact of. 

  • To furnish with cushions. 

  • To seat or place on, or as on a cushion. 

  • To conceal or cover up, as under a cushion. 

noun
  • a sufficient quantity of an intangible object (like points or minutes) to allow for some of those points, for example, to be lost without hurting one's chances for successfully completing an objective. 

  • A soft mass of material stuffed into a cloth bag, used for comfort or support; for sitting on, kneeling on, resting one's head on etc. 

  • A pad on which gilders cut gold leaf. 

  • The lip around a table in cue sports which absorbs some of the impact of the billiard balls and bounces them back. 

  • A mass of steam in the end of the cylinder of a steam engine to receive the impact of the piston. 

  • An engraver's pad. 

  • Money kept in reserve. 

  • The pillow used in making bone lace. 

  • A pad supporting a woman's hair. 

  • The rubber of an electrical machine. 

  • The dancer in the cushion dance who currently holds the cushion, or the dance itself. 

How often have the words allay and cushion occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )