Emily Dickinson Lexicon

COUCH, v.t.

1. To lay down; to repose on a bed or place of rest. Where unbruised youth, with unstuffed brain, / Doth couch his limbs. – Shak.
2. To lay down; to spread on a bed or floor; as, to couch malt. – Mortimer.
3. To lay close, or in a stratum. The waters couch themselves, as close as may be, to the center of the globe. – Burnet.
4. To hide; lay close, or in another body. It is in use at this day, to couch vessels in walls, to gather the wind from the top, and pass it down in spouts into rooms. – Bacon.
5. To include secretly; to hide; or to express in obscure terms, that imply what is to be understood; with under. All this, and more, lies couched under this allegory. – L'Estrange. Hence,
6. To involve; to include; to comprise; to comprehend or express. This great argument for a future state, which St. Paul hath couched in the words read. – Atterbury.
7. To lie close. – Spenser.
8. To fix a spear in the rest, in the posture of attack. They couched their spears. – Milton. Dryden.
9. To depress the condensed crystaline humor or film that overspreads the pupil of the eye. – Johnson. To remove a cataract, by entering a needle through the coats of the eye, and pushing the lens to the bottom of the vitreous humor, and then downward and outward, so as to leave it in the under and outside of the eye. – Encyc. The true phrase is, to couch a cataract; but we say, to couch the eye, or the patient.