Emily Dickinson Lexicon

BED, n. [Sax. bed; D. bed; G. bett or beet; Goth. badi. 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. – Clarendon.
4. A plat or level piece of ground in a garden, usually a little raised above the adjoining ground. – Bacon.
5. The channel of a river, or that part in which the water usually flows. – Milton.
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. ii The grave. Is. lvii. The lawful use of wedlock. – Heb. xiii. 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 breech and half the trunnions. In masonry, bed is a range of stones, and the joint of the bed is the mortar between the two stones placed over each other. – Encyc. 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. – Encyc. From board and bed. In law, a separation of man and wife, without dissolving the bands of matrimony, is called a separation from board and bed, a mensa et toro. In this case the wife has a suitable maintenance allotted to her out of the husband's estate, called alimony. – Blackstone.