bed

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A piece of furniture for reclining and sleeping, typically consisting of a flat, rectangular frame and a mattress resting on springs.
2. n. A bedstead.
3. n. A mattress.
4. n. A place where one may sleep; lodging: found bed and board at an inn.
5. n. Accommodations for a single person at a hospital or institution: a maternity ward with 30 beds.
6. n. A time at which one goes to sleep: drank milk before bed.
7. n. A place for lovemaking.
8. n. A marital relationship with its rights and intimacies.
9. n. A small plot of cultivated or planted land: a flower bed.
10. n. An underwater or intertidal area in which a particular organism is established in large numbers: a clam bed; an oyster bed.
11. n. The bottom of a body of water, such as a stream.
12. n. A supporting, underlying, or securing part, especially:
13. n. A layer of food surmounted by another kind of food: tomatoes on a bed of lettuce.
14. n. A foundation of crushed rock or a similar substance for a road or railroad; a roadbed.
15. n. A layer of mortar upon which stones or bricks are laid.
16. n. Printing The heavy table of a printing press in which the type form is placed.
17. n. The part of a truck, trailer, or freight car designed to carry loads.
18. n. Geology A rock mass of large horizontal extent bounded, especially above, by physically different material.
19. n. Geology A deposit, as of ore, parallel to local stratification.
20. n. A heap of material: a bed of wood chips.
21. v. To furnish with a bed or sleeping quarters: We bedded our guests down in the study.
22. v. To put or send to bed.
23. v. To have sexual relations with.
24. v. To plant in a prepared plot of soil.
25. v. To lay flat or arrange in layers.
26. v. To embed.
27. v. To establish; base.
28. v. To go to bed.
29. v. Geology To form layers or strata.
30. idiom. get into bed with Slang To become closely involved with another person or group, as in an intrigue: "The Israelis were experienced at this kind of [covert] ... work, but it was essential that the administration not get into bed with them on this” ( Bob Woodward).
31. idiom. go to bed with To have sexual relations with.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. That upon or within which one reposes or sleeps. A large flat bag filled with feathers, down, hair, straw, or the like; a mattress.
2. n. Hence By extension, the resting-place of an animal.
3. n. Any sleeping-place; a lodging; accommodation for the night.
4. n. Matrimonial connection; conjugal union; matrimonial rights and duties.
5. n. Offspring; progeny.
6. n. Anything resembling, or assumed to resemble, a bed in form or position. A plat or piece of ground in a garden in which plants, especially flowers, are grown, usually raised a little above the adjoining ground.
7. n. The bottom of a river or other stream, or of any body of water.
8. n. A layer; a stratum; an extended mass of anything, whether upon the earth or within it: as, a bed of sulphur; a bed of sand or clay. In geology a bed is a layer of rock; a portion of a rock-mass which has so much homogeneity, and is so separated from the rock which lies over and under it, that it has a character of its own. This distinctness of character may be given by peculiarities of composition, texture, or color, or simply by a facility of separation from the associated beds. Thus, there may be a bed of marble intercalated in a mass of shale; or there may be several beds of marble associated together, each bed being individualized by peculiarities of texture or color. In the latter case there would ordinarily be a distinct break or solution of continuity between the different beds, so that when quarried they would separate from each other without difficulty along the plane of contact. The Latin word stratum is commonly employed in geological writings, and is almost the exact equivalent of bed. Bed, as applied to mineral deposits, implies ordinarily that the masses of ore thus characterized lie flat, and have more or less of the character of sedimentary deposits, in distinction from those of true veins, or lodes.
9. n. Anything resembling a bed in function; that on which anything lies, or in which anything is embedded. Particularly— In building: Either of the horizontal surfaces of a building-stone in position. The surfaces are distinguished as the upper and the lower bed. The under surface of a brick, shingle, slate, or tile in position.
10. n. A flock or number of animals, as of wild fowl on the water, closely packed together.
11. n. A division of the ground in the game of hop-scotch, also called locally the game of “beds.”
12. To place in or as in a bed.
13. To go to bed with; make partaker of one's bed.
14. To provide a bed for; furnish with accommodations for sleeping.
15. To put to bed; specifically, to put (a couple) to bed together, as was formerly the custom at weddings.
16. To make a bed of, or plant in beds, as a mass of flowering plants or foliage-plants; also, to transplant into a bed or beds, as from pots or a hothouse: often with out.
17. To embed; fix or set in a permanent position; furnish with a bed: as, to bed a stone.
18. To lay in a stratum; stratify; lay in order or fiat.
19. To make a bed for, as a horse: commonly used with down.
20. To go to bed; retire to sleep: by extension applied to animals.
21. To cohabit; use the same bed; sleep together.
22. To rest as in or on a bed: with on.
23. To flock closely together, as wild fowl on the surface of the water.
24. To sleep; pass the night, as game in cover.
25. An occasional Middle English preterit of bid.
26. n. The curved piece of wood which forms the main section of the platform carriage-part of a vehicle.

Wiktionary

1. n. A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, to sleep on.
2. n. uncountable Sleep; rest; getting to sleep.
3. n. One's place of sleep or rest.
4. n. The time for going to sleep or resting in bed.
5. n. uncountable Time spent in a bed.
6. n. A prepared spot to spend the night in, as in camping bed.
7. n. A garden plot, as in "bed of roses".
8. n. An area where a large number of oysters, mussels, or other sessile shellfish is found.
9. n. A flat surface or layer on which something else is to be placed.
10. n. A foundation or supporting surface formed of a fluid.
11. n. The platform of truck, trailer, railcar, or other vehicle that supports the load to be hauled.
12. n. A deposit of ore, coal etc.
13. n. geology the smallest division of a geologic formation or stratigraphic rock series marked by well-defined divisional planes (bedding planes) separating it from layers above and below
14. n. A shaped piece of timber to hold a cask clear of a ship’s floor; a pallet.
15. n. A piece of music, normally instrumental, over which a Radio DJ talks.
16. n. uncountable Sexual activity.
17. v. To go to a sleeping bed.
18. v. To put oneself to sleep.
19. v. To settle, as machinery.
20. v. To set in a soft matrix, as paving stones in sand, or tiles in cement.
21. v. To set out plants in a garden bed.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An article of furniture to sleep or take rest in or on; a couch. Specifically: A sack or mattress, filled with some soft material, in distinction from the bedstead on which it is placed (as, a feather bed), or this with the bedclothes added. In a general sense, any thing or place used for sleeping or reclining on or in, as a quantity of hay, straw, leaves, or twigs.
2. n. (Used as the symbol of matrimony) Marriage.
3. n. A plat or level piece of ground in a garden, usually a little raised above the adjoining ground.
4. n. A mass or heap of anything arranged like a bed.
5. n. The bottom of a watercourse, or of any body of water.
6. n. (Geol.) A layer or seam, or a horizontal stratum between layers
7. n. (Gun.) See Gun carriage, and Mortar bed.
8. n. The horizontal surface of a building stone.
9. n. A course of stone or brick in a wall.
10. n. The place or material in which a block or brick is laid.
11. n. The lower surface of a brick, slate, or tile.
12. n. (Mech.) The foundation or the more solid and fixed part or framing of a machine; or a part on which something is laid or supported.
13. n. The superficial earthwork, or ballast, of a railroad.
14. n. (Printing) The flat part of the press, on which the form is laid.
15. v. obsolete To place in a bed.
16. v. To make partaker of one's bed; to cohabit with.
17. v. To furnish with a bed or bedding.
18. v. To plant or arrange in beds; to set, or cover, as in a bed of soft earth.
19. v. To lay or put in any hollow place, or place of rest and security, surrounded or inclosed; to embed; to furnish with or place upon a bed or foundation.
20. v. (Masonry) To dress or prepare the surface of stone) so as to serve as a bed.
21. v. To lay flat; to lay in order; to place in a horizontal or recumbent position.
22. v. To go to bed; to cohabit.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (geology) a stratum of rock (especially sedimentary rock)
2. n. a depression forming the ground under a body of water
3. n. a stratum of ore or coal thick enough to be mined with profit
4. v. furnish with a bed
5. n. single thickness of usually some homogeneous substance
6. v. place (plants) in a prepared bed of soil
7. n. 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.
8. n. a foundation of earth or rock supporting a road or railroad track
9. v. prepare for sleep
10. v. have sexual intercourse with
11. n. a plot of ground in which plants are growing
12. n. a piece of furniture that provides a place to sleep
13. v. put to bed