Bed

Bed, bed, n. a couch or place to sleep on: a plot in a garden: a place in which anything rests, in carpentry, architecture, &c.: 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 mattress, bed-clothes, &c., 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, &c.; Bed′post, a post forming an angle of a bedstead, often in former days high enough to support a canopy; Bed′presser (Shak.), a heavy, lazy fellow.—adjs. Bed′rid, Bed′ridden, confined to bed by age or sickness: 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, &c. 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.]