thump mat
n.— «‘Thump mats,” as they became known, were handmade by sailors to muffle the sound of the pulleys hitting the wooden deck, for the benefit of those trying to sleep below deck.» —“Need rope? Knot a problem for Barry” by Jodie van de Wetering ABC (Wide Bay, Queensland, Australia) June 15, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...