Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Feather bed   /fˈɛðər bɛd/   Listen
Feather bed

noun
1.
A mattress stuffed with feathers.  Synonym: featherbed.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Feather bed" Quotes from Famous Books



... Who will buy A wee little cloud for the pretty blue sky? Some are purple, some are red, And all are soft as a feather bed. Hi! Little children, won't any one buy One little cloud for the ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson

... time the landlady, having disposed of the squire, desired to know, with many curtsies, if his honour would not choose to put off his wet garments, assuring him, that she had a very good feather bed at his service, upon which many gentlevolks of the virst quality had lain, that the sheets were well aired, and that Dolly would warm them for his worship with a pan of coals. This hospitable offer being repeated, he seemed to wake from ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... a night once at your house, Mr. White," he said. "I was going to Frankfort on horseback. I was overtaken at dusk by a storm and I reached your place just in time. I remember that I slept on a mighty soft feather bed, and ate a splendid breakfast ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... after that. His "granny" tucked him in his big feather bed every night, and listened to his little prayer, but she was not the same as mother. She did not kiss him in the same way, nor did her hand feel like mother's when she smoothed his rumpled hair or buttoned his flannel nightgown about his neck or ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... on Mrs. Moon's front porch, clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tight, then got up quickly. "You all may stay out here if you want to, but I'm going in. I never did think it was right to tempt Providence, and if there was a feather bed in the house I'd get on it. Can't the windows be lowered, Beth, and somebody start the pianola and turn on the lights? A thunderstorm like this gives me such a sinking feeling in my stomach I feel like I'm sitting ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... are pretty much accustomed to sleep in a bed; that is to say, on a couch consisting of a frame some three and a half or four feet wide, and some six or six and a half feet long. On this frame or bedstead we place two or three mattresses and a feather bed, a pair of sheets, a counterpane, a pillow and bolster; we then tuck in the edges of these coverings, the person for whom the bed is intended slips in between the sheets, and if his health is good and his conscience clear, and he has not been drinking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... a feather bed to die in. Some men are blamed particular." As he spoke Carpy caught his first glimpse of Kate. "Hello! There's the pretty little girl from the great big ranch. No wonder the man's up and coming—what did you send for me for, McAlpin? Where ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room enough in Fanny's dress, if Anna had it on, as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... houses was made of logs and the cracks was daubed with mud. They would have two rooms. Our bedsteads was made of poplar wood and we kept them scrubbed white with sand. We used roped woven together for slats. Our mattresses were made of cotton, grass, or even shucks. My mother had a feather bed. The chairs was made from cedar with split white ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... north side of the room, with its head against the wall, stood the pride of the chamber—a four-post, mahogany bedstead with white, dimity curtains, and with a full, high, feather bed and bolsters and pillows heaped up, and covered—the bed with a homemade, blue-and-white counterpane, and the bolster and pillows by cases ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... resource left, was what is called in Hibernian parlance, a "low-backed car," that is, a car without any back whatever; it being neither more nor less than the common agricultural conveyance of the country, upon which, a feather bed being laid, the farmers' wives and daughters are generally conveyed to fairs, wakes, and stations, &c. Putting her dignity, if not in her pocket, at least wherever it could be most easily accommodated, Miss O'Dowd placed her fair self, in all the plenitude of her charms and the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... Mrs. Wingate truculently, "no difference what you men say, I ain't going to leave my bureau, nor my table, nor my chairs! I'm going to keep my two churns and my feather bed too. We've had butter all the way so far, and I mean to have it all the way—and eggs. I mean to sleep at nights, too, if the pesky muskeeters'll let me. They most have et me up. And I'd give a dollar for a drink of real water now. It's all right to settle this water ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... child was too precocious. Corpses only filled her with a great curiosity; so that, for the sake of peace, she was allowed to lie down in mother Coupeau's place. She liked big beds, the chit; she spread herself out and rolled about. She slept uncommonly well that night in the warm and pleasant feather bed. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... north corner of Darling Street and Temple Alley a little old woman, white-haired and shrunken in frame, has guarded all day long a bag of clothes and a feather bed, her only possessions. She was thrown out of her room at 19-1/2 Temple Alley this morning and she has ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... A feather bed had every man, Warm slippers and hot-water can, Brown windsor from the captain's store, A valet, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... furniture usually consisted of a wooden bench, instead of a chair, and a crude bed made from heavy wood. Slats were used in the place of springs. The mattress was made stuffing a large bag with wheat straw. "This slept as good as any feather bed" says Mr. Wright. Candles were used to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... was the road, and tossed about as they were in the wagon, the Bobbsey twins were not hurt a bit, as the blankets spread over the spicy-smelling pine branches made a couch almost as soft as a feather bed for them. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope

... the cold damp thing at as few points as possible. It would not do. William relentlessly drew the blanket tight round us; every inch of our superficies felt the chill of the sheet. Then he placed above us a feather bed, cut out to fit about the head, and stretched no end of blankets over all. 'How long are we to be here?' was our inquiry. 'Fifty minutes,' said William, and disappeared. So there we were, packed in ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... comin right dere over de hill den. Say she see more Yankees den could ever cover up all de premises bout dere. Den I hear my Missus scream en come a runnin wid a lapful of silver en tell my grandmammy to hurry en sew dat up in de feather bed cause dem Yankees was mighty apt to destroy all dey valuables. Old Missus tell all de colored people to get away, get away en take care of demselves en tell we chillun to get back to de chimney corner cause she couldn' protect us noways ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... is even worse. Last night I got into such a sweat under the big German feather bed that I had to throw it off. But when I asked for a single blanket they didn't have any, so I had to wrap up ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... place of an under sheet. The feather pillow is in a plain slip of white cotton, similarly fastened. Over the whole a blanket or comfortable is laid, securely enfolded in another white case, which also serves instead of an upper sheet. Over this is the feather bed, usually encased in colored print, sometimes of bright colors. Under this one always sleeps. Over the bed, from low head-board to foot-board, is stretched by day the uppermost covering. Ours was of maroon cotton flannel, bordered in front by ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... Hurry, Nora, for Heaven's sake! For the life of me, don't give me a cup of cold water to taste, and then dash it from my lips. If we are not quick, we'll be caught and prevented from going. I am ready; wrap me up in a rug, and carry me out. I am ready and willing. Good-by to feather bed-dom. I don't want ever to see ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... tumbling to sleep in a grave in the snow, in spite of the elements. In this hole in a sleeping-bag, protected by the light drift which blew in, one rested as comfortably as in a more conventional type of feather bed. Nor, when I think of De Quincey's idea of supreme happiness before the glowing logs, can I forget that gorgeous blaze which the watch kept up by felling trees full length into the fire, so that our Yule logs were twenty feet long, and the ruddy glow and crackling warmth ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... celestial bed no feather bed is employed; sometimes mattresses filled with sweet new wheat or cut straw, with the grain in the ears, and mingled with balm, rose leaves, lavender flowers, and oriental spices, and, at other times, springy hair mattresses are ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... and a few pieces of homemade furniture. However, between 1607 and 1612, George Percy was generously outfitted with some necessities as well as much fine apparel and numerous luxury items (including a feather bed) by his brother the Ninth Earl of Northumberland, as published records of the Earl's expenditures for George show. Other persons of gentle birth and position quite probably ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... in many places completely covered with a variety of yellowish-green moss, varying from a couple of inches to a foot and a half in thickness; and yielding to the pressure of the foot or the body as comfortably as a feather bed, if not more so, being elastic in nature. A large square of this had been cut up from some other part of the island and placed on the already moss-grown and cushioned ground, serving as a mattress, while two smaller pieces served as pillows. A sumac tree at the head of the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... inspector opened the door, and hesitatingly, one after the other, entered the room. Their eyes met the following sight: Beside the single window stood the big wooden bed with a huge feather mattress. On the crumpled feather bed lay a tumbled, crumpled quilt. The pillow, in a cotton pillow-case, also much crumpled, was dragging on the floor. On the table beside the bed lay a silver watch and a silver twenty-kopeck piece. Beside ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... They slept on a feather bed with their fur coats over them; in the morning they broke ice in the pitcher—the vast flowered and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... of our society has brought us on the contrary to this curious condition: he who does not work at all and consequently has no honest fatigue to rest from, lies upon a soft feather bed, there to restore his strength wasted in fast living and dissipation, whilst.... But I had better stop or I may be mistaken ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... and returning to her prayers, vowed, poor lady, to make a pilgrimage to St. Maria Zell, in Styria, if the Holy Virgin's intercessions obtained their success, and till the pilgrimage could be made, "to forego every Saturday night my feather bed!" After another false alarm at a supposed noise at the maidens' door, she ventured into the vault to see how her companions were getting on, when she found they had filed away all the locks, except that of the case containing the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... same train stopped on their way out to listen. The farm boy patted the sack and declared that it was clean straw, the coachman stood up on his box and swore that it was a new sack, the porter assured the Fraeulein that it was as comfortable as a feather bed, and nobody seemed to understand that what she was being ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... must store my plunder at this inn, since the hostess is an honest woman. Hola! ma cherie, I wish to leave with you my gold-work, my velvet, my silk, my feather bed, my incense-boat, my ewer, my naping linen, and all the rest of it. I take only the money in a linen bag, and the box of rose colored sugar which is a gift from my captain to the Lady Loring. Wilt guard ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in the tonneau,' says he, indicatin' the upholstered after cockpit of the concern. I opened up the shiny hatch, under orders from him, and climbed in among the upholstery. 'Twas soft as a feather bed. ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... that women's work is taken for granted. A farmer will allow his daughter to work many weary unpaid years, and when she gets married he will give her "a feather bed and a cow," and feel that her claim upon him has been handsomely met. The gift of a feather bed is rather interesting, too, when you consider that it is the daughter who has raised the geese, plucked them, and made the bed-tick. But "father" gives it to ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... feather bed loungers, where do you suppose we were to sleep? There was no comfortable hotel to receive us; not even a house where a board informs the benighted traveller that there is "entertainment for man and horse;" not even the skeleton of a wigwam; the snow eight feet deep,—the thermometer nineteen ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad

... bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny cabin, new-boarded and bare, in front of it a blazing bonfire. A white man was tossing into the flames different household articles—a feather bed, a bedstead, two rickety chairs. A young, boyish fellow, golden-faced and curly, stood with clenched fists, while a woman with tear-stained eyes clung to him. The white man raised a cradle to dash it into the flames; the woman cried, and the yellow man raised his ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the young man sang his own death song and jumped off. Falling swiftly as an arrow, feet downward, he struck a great snow drift at the bottom. It received him like an immense feather bed. He sank in so far that he had hard work to get out. When he had succeeded, he found all of his party, not spirits, as he had expected, but living men, safe and sound. The snow had ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... having closed the door, planted himself in front of it with a heroic gesture. Deuce take it! his own interest was at stake in the matter. The fact was that when his child was once in the gutter he ran great risk of not having a feather bed to sleep on himself. He was superb in that attitude of an indignant father, but he did not keep it long. Two hands, two vises, seized his wrists, and he found himself in the middle of the room, leaving the doorway ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... I was beating the feather bed in the back bedroom. Nay, not a step lower do you go, ma'am, not if I lose me job ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... fattening, while I drone in my feather bed," he had as often said, with the delighted observation of the philosopher. "And me but a young man yet—but a mere boy," he would add. "I have piled it up—I have piled it up, and it keeps on growing, first ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... especially interested in all good housewives, and she herself set them an excellent example in Fensalir. When the snowflakes fell, the earth-dwellers knew it was Frigga shaking her great feather bed, and when it rained they said it was her washing day. It was she who first gave to them the gift of flax that the women upon earth might spin, and weave, and bleach their linen as white as the clouds of her ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... of the door where he'd laid all night on a feather bed, he was polishing the pumps of his monkey master—beautiful yellow pumps—rubbing 'em with paste, fairly glazing 'em, my boy. I stopped to watch him, and the chap told me all about himself. Mon vieux, I don't remember much more ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse



Words linked to "Feather bed" :   mattress, featherbed



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org