Words: mattress, n.
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Your support makes all the difference.NORA EPHRON'S cyberspace movie You've Got Mail is not the perfect romantic comedy which was its inspiration, The Shop Around the Corner. There are good touches: an allusion to the musical version, She Loves Me; Tom Hanks, a chain-store-owner, uses an IBM lap-top, Meg Ryan, an independent shop-owner, an Apple; and men's close knowledge of The Godfather, as in the advice "go to the mattresses" - sleeping on the floor before an offensive.
Absent from the OED, it figures in the Random House American Slang, but not until a 1976 instance, when it means something defensive, derived from mattresses as a shield against bullets. The Godfather perhaps echoes an old naval expression, to go to the mat - to settle a dispute by wrestling.
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