Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A bedmate.
- n. One that is closely associated or allied with another: "Stupidity here makes an easy bedfellow, as always, with racialism” ( Christopher Hitchens).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One who shares a bed with another.
Wiktionary
- n. One with whom one shares a bed.
- n. An associate, often an otherwise improbable one.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who lies with another in the same bed; a person who shares one's couch.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person with whom you share a bed
- n. a temporary associate
Etymologies
- bed + fellow (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The next morning when the maid came in to make the fire, we woke up face to face in the same bed, and then she told me that her name was Belle Boyd, and I knew for the first time that my bedfellow was the South's famous female spy.”
“Apple has found a strange 'bedfellow' in its quest to push HTML5 over Adobe's Flash: the”
WN.com - Articles related to Georgia ban on texting while driving takes affect
“Apple has found a strange 'bedfellow' in its quest to push HTML5 over Adobe's Flash: the movie someday?”
WN.com - Articles related to Georgia ban on texting while driving takes affect
“With their early call to action so widely ignored, it was somewhat ironic that The New York Times found such a strange bedfellow in Michele Bachmann who, in the middle of the televised Tea Party debate, blasted her Republican opponent Rick Perry for signing an executive order in Texas to mandate the controversial vaccine for all girls in his state.”
The Huffington Post: Shelley Ross: What the Tea Party -- and Everyone Else -- Missed on Gardasil®
“The organization's allies demonized the charity, attempting to depict the nation's most prominent anti-breast cancer organization as a bedfellow of religious extremists.”
“When Mark Twain, as he lay awake imagining himself a millionaire, told his bedfellow that the first thing he was going to do with his money was to build a castle in San Francisco, he was expressing succinctly the close relationship between Washoe and the metropolis of the West.”
“DUNE propounded the shocking idea that religion is a dangerous bedfellow for politics, and that even a messiah cannot control what comes of his messianic mission.”
“Remember, he is working with the President and an odd bedfellow in Rev. Sharpton to raise our educational performance, and his candidness is always refreshing.”
“That's right, a woman in New Zealand suffered a small stroke that partially paralyzed her after receiving a hickey -- or as the Kiwis call it, a "love bite" -- from her eager bedfellow, reported New Zealand Medical Journal.”
“Casinos, dancing rooms, divans, night houses, pleasure gardens, music halls, and cafes worked as more casual sites for picking up a bedfellow, but most commonly the flaneur fulfilled his desire by hitting the streets.”
The Washington Post: Deborah Lutz's "Pleasure Bound," on Victorian sex rebels
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bedfellow’.
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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Fellowship
A list where words can mingle with their fellows. Feel free to add any fellas and fellers.
fellow, fellowship, bedfellow, strange bedfellows, Robin Goodfellow, fellow-traveler, research fellow, Odd Fellows, Oddfellows, oddfellows, Oddfellows Hall, The Order of Patr... and 41 more...
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Hearticulating
All sorts of names or terms for romantic partners: vague, clinical, physical, sleazy, cheesy, co-dependent, demeaning, sarcastic, or the dutifully committed. This is to provide a wide-range of le...
couple, partner, lover, sweetheart, significant other, confidant, consort, mate, better half, paramour, accomplice, counterpart and 52 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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whitmanian
from the poetry and prose of walt whitman
celebrate, assume, loafe, grass, summer, distillation, atmosphere, undisguised, naked, mad, breath, loveroot and 291 more...
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Listless
Nowhere else to put these yet.
sibilant, cloying, pithy, apologia, odyssey, amanuensis, pleasantries, ginormous, burnish, sojourn, quonset, over-under and 217 more...
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Favourite Words
sanguine, irk, pith, venerate, anomaly, reprobate, ethereal, antediluvian, obfuscate, wistful, plethora, absinthe and 108 more...
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Through Thick & Thin
sidekick, partner, buddy, ally, accessory, accomplice, cohort, collaborator, pal, mate, compadre, compatriot and 30 more...
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abiohphobia's Words
defenestrate, acquiesce, scruple, cruciverbalist, deleterious, topiary, lugubrious, forsooth, cunt, auscultate, bulbous, lascivious and 155 more...
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endearments etc.
commodore, archon, consort, overlord, gent, liege, cap'n, chief, player two, preciosa, beau, cherie and 38 more...
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han's list
Interesting words, mostly from The Economist and other newspapers.
sauerkraut, latke, hoi polloi, supplication, belie, sinecure, duplicity, eulogize, gentile, denouement, peaceable, nous and 29 more...
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compound words
My favourites.
birdbath, gallowglass, lamplight, chokecherry, lightbox, riptide, softshoe, snowshed, bluebird, matchbox, sugarcane, nightcap and 64 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bedfellow.
hernesheir Frequently described as "strange". Dec 5, 2010
dontcry MY favorite type of bed companion! Dec 31, 2008