Bed

How to spell bed

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bed

What does bed mean?

1. nounA piece of furniture or surface on which a person sleeps or rests.
2. nounA prepared area of soil for plants, or a flat base layer of material.

Bed in a sentence

• She made the bed before leaving for work.

• He planted tulips along the flower bed by the fence.

• The hotel room had a king-size bed near the window.

• The pipe was laid on a bed of fine gravel.

Where does bed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English bedd, which named both a place to sleep and a garden plot. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root badjam, shared with the Dutch bed and the German Bett, and many scholars connect it further to an ancient root meaning 'to dig', suggesting the original sense may have been a hollowed-out sleeping spot scratched into the ground. From the earliest records the word carried the double life it still has today: a place where a person lies down and a level base in which something is laid, such as a plot of soil for plants or a foundation layer in building. The spelling has stayed remarkably simple and stable for over a thousand years, which is why almost no adult ever fumbles it. Its straightforwardness is a small reminder that the oldest, most everyday English words tend to be the shortest and most phonetic.

How the word is built

• bed (single root noun from Old English bedd, a resting place); no prefix or suffix