Bed

bed, n. a couch or place to sleep on: a plot in a garden: a place in which anything rests, in carpentry, architecture, .: conjugal union, the marriage-bed, matrimonial rights and duties: the channel of a river: ( geol. ) a layer or stratum.— v.t. to place in bed, as a couple after a wedding: to provide a bed, or to make a bed, for: to sow or plant: to lay in layers.— v.i. to cohabit or use the same bed with another:— pr.p. bed′ding; pa.p. bed′ded. — ns. Bed′chamber (see Bed′room ); Bed′ding , a collective name for the mattre , bed-clothes, ., also litter for cattle.— adj. Bed′fast , confined to bed.— ns. Bed′fellow , a sharer of the same bed; Bed′maker , the name at Cambridge and elsewhere for those who make the beds and sweep the rooms in college; Bed′-of-hon′our , the grave of a soldier who has fallen in battle; Bed′-of-jus′tice (Fr. lit. de justice ), the king's throne in the Parlement of Paris, also a sitting at which the king was present, chiefly for the registration of his own decrees; Bed′plate ( mech. ), the foundation plate of an engine, lathe, .; Bed′post , a post forming an angle of a bedstead, often in former days high enough to support a canopy; Bed′pre er ( Shak. ), a heavy, lazy fellow.— adjs. Bed′rid , Bed′ridden , confined to bed by age or sickne : worn out.— ns. Bed′right ( Shak. ), the privilege of the marriage-bed; Bed′rock , the solid rock underneath superficial formations; Bed′room , a room in which there is a bed: a sleeping apartment— Bedchamber was the earlier form.— n.pl. Bed′-sores , painful ulcers that often arise in a long confinement to bed, esp. over the bony prominences of the body—the lower parts of the spine, the haunch bones, the heel, and the elbow.— ns. Bed′-staff , a staff or stick formerly used about a bed, in old times a handy weapon, whence perhaps the phrase, 'in the twinkling of a bed-staff;' Bed′stead , a frame for supporting a bed; Bed′straw , the name applied to a genus of the Rubiaceæ, of which eleven species are found in England, the most familiar our Lady's Bedstraw, or Yellow Bedstraw ( Galium verum ), sometimes called Cheese Rennet from its property of curdling milk; Bed′swerver ( Shak. ), one who is false to his marriage vow; Bed′tick , the case in which feathers, hair, chaff, . are put for bedding.— adv. Bed′ward , in the direction of bed: towards bedtime.— n. Bed′work ( Shak. ), work easily performed, as if done in bed.— Bed and board , food and lodging: full connubial relations; Bed of down , or roses , any easy or comfortable place.— Lords of the Bedchamber , twelve officers in the British royal household who wait in turn upon the sovereign's person; in the reign of a queen the office is performed by ladies.— To be brought to bed , to be confined in child-birth (with of ); To keep one's bed , to remain in bed; To lie in the bed one has made , to have to accept the consequences of one's own conduct; To make a bed , to put a bed in order after it has been used. [A.S. bed ; Ger. bett , Ice. bedr .]