bed
pronunciation
How to pronounce bed in British English:
UK [bed]
How to pronounce bed in American English:
US [bed]
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- Noun:
- a piece of furniture that provides a place to sleep
- a plot of ground in which plants are growing
- a depression forming the ground under a body of water
- (geology) a stratum of rock (especially sedimentary rock)
- a stratum of ore or coal thick enough to be mined with profit
- single thickness of usually some homogeneous substance
- the flat surface of a printing press on which the type form is laid in the last stage of producing a newspaper or magazine or book etc.
- a foundation of earth or rock supporting a road or railroad track
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- Verb:
- furnish with a bed
- place (plants) in a prepared bed of soil
- put to bed
- have sexual intercourse with
- go to bed in order to sleep
Word Origin
- bed
- bed: [OE] Bed is common throughout the Germanic languages (German bett, Dutch bed), and comes from a prehistoric Germanic *bathjam. Already in Old English times the word meant both ‘place for sleeping’ and ‘area for growing plants’, and if the latter is primary, it could mean that the word comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhodh-, source of Latin fodere ‘dig’ (from which English gets fosse and fossil), and that the underlying notion of a bed was therefore originally of a sleeping place dug or scraped in the ground, like an animal’s lair.=> fosse, fossil
- bed (v.)
- Old English beddian "to provide with a bed or lodgings," from bed (n.). From c. 1300 as "to go to bed," also "to copulate with, to go to bed with;" 1440 as "to lay out (land) in plots or beds." Related: Bedded; bedding.
- bed (n.)
- Old English bedd "bed, couch, resting place, garden plot," from Proto-Germanic *badjam "sleeping place dug in the ground" (cognates: Old Frisian, Old Saxon bed, Middle Dutch bedde, Old Norse beðr, Old High German betti, German Bett, Gothic badi "bed"), from PIE root *bhedh- "to dig, pierce" (cognates: Hittite beda- "to pierce, prick," Greek bothyros "pit," Latin fossa "ditch," Lithuanian bedre "to dig," Breton bez "grave"). Both "sleeping" and "gardening" senses are in Old English. Meaning "bottom of a lake, sea, watercourse" is from 1580s.
Example
- 1. The man himself lay in the bed .
- 2. But I went to bed angry that night .
- 3. It all starts with a little before bed routine .
- 4. The bed has a cosy cream cashmere throw .
- 5. A bed in a simple guesthouse costs at least half that .