bed

BED, n. [The sense is a lay or spread, from laying or setting.]

1. A place or an article of furniture to sleep and take rest on; in modern times, and among civilized men, a sack or tick filled with feathers or wool; but a bed may be made of straw or any other materials. The word bed includes often the bedstead.

2. Lodging; a convenient place for sleep.

3. Marriage; matrimonial connection.

George, the eldest son of his second bed.

4. A plat or level piece of ground in a garden, usually a little raised above the adjoining ground.

5. The channel of a river,or that part in which the water usually flows.

6. Any hollow place, especially in the arts; a hollow place, in which any thing rests; as the bed of a mortar.

7. A layer; a stratum; an extended mass of any thing, whether upon the earth or within it; as a bed of sulphur; a bed of sand or clay.

8. Pain, torment. Rev.2. The grave. Is.57. The lawful use of wedlock. Heb.13.

The bed of the carriage of a gun is a thick plank which lies under the piece, being, as it were, the body of the carriage.

The bed of a mortar is a solid piece of oak, hollow in the middle, to receive the britch and half the trunnions.

In masonry, bed is a range of stones, and the joint of the bed is the mortar between two stones placed over each other.

Bed of justice, in France, was a throne on which the king was seated when he went to parliament. Hence the phrase, to hold a bed of justice.

To make a bed, is to put it in order after it has been used.

To bring to bed, to deliver of a child, is rarely used. But in the passive form, to be brought to bed, that is, to be delivered of a child, is common. It is often followed by of; as, to be brought to bed of a son.

To put to bed, in midwifery, is to deliver of a child.

Dining bed, or discubitory bed, among the ancients, a bed on which persons lay at meals. It was four or five feet high, and would hold three or four persons. Three of these beds were ranged by a square table, one side of the table being left open, and accessible to the waiters. Hence the Latin name for the table and the room, triclinium, or three beds.

From bed and board. In law, a separation of man and wife,without dissolving the bands of matrimony, is called a separation from bed and board, a mensa et thoro. In this case the wife has a suitable maintenance allotted to her out of the husband's estate, called alimony.

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