bed

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A piece of furniture that you sleep on.

   They sat on the edge of the bed and talked.

2. 2
   noun

   An area of ground where flowers or plants are grown.

   The gardener planted a bed of roses by the path.

3. 3
   noun

   The ground at the bottom of the sea, a river, or a lake.

   Divers searched the ocean bed for the wreck.

4. 4
   noun

   A layer of something underneath other things.

   The fish was served on a bed of rice.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Bed is an Old English word with Germanic relatives, and its earliest underlying idea may have been “digging.” Both a sleeping bed and a garden bed were already named by related forms in Old English and other Germanic languages.

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *badją Proto-West Germanic *badi Old English bedd Middle English bed English bed Inherited from Middle English bed, bedde, from Old English bedd, from Proto-West Germanic *badi, from Proto-Germanic *badją (“resting-place, plot of ground”). Cognates Cognate with Scots bed, North Frisian baad, beed, Bēr, Saterland Frisian Bääd, West Frisian bêd, Cimbrian pett, Dutch bed, Dutch Low Saxon bedde, German Bett, Bette, German Low German Bedd, Luxembourgish Bett, Vilamovian bet, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål bed, Faroese and Icelandic beð, beður, Norwegian Nynorsk bed, bedd,…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary