couch
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also Couch
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English [edit]
Pronunciation [edit]
Etymology 1 [edit]
From Old French couche.
Noun [edit]
couch (plural couches)
- An item of furniture for the comfortable seating of more than one person.
- Bed, resting-place.
- For usage examples of this term, see the citations page.
- Shakespeare
- Gentle sleep […] why liest thou with the vile / In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch?
- Bryant
- Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
- A mass of steeped barley spread upon a floor to germinate, in malting; or the floor occupied by the barley.
- couch of malt
- (art, painting and gilding) A preliminary layer, as of colour or size.
Synonyms [edit]
Derived terms [edit]
Descendants [edit]
- German: Couch
Translations [edit]
furniture for seating
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See also [edit]
Verb [edit]
couch (third-person singular simple present couches, present participle couching, simple past and past participle couched)
Synonyms [edit]
Translations [edit]
lie down (on a couch)
Etymology 2 [edit]
From Old French couchier
Verb [edit]
couch (third-person singular simple present couches, present participle couching, simple past and past participle couched)
- To phrase in a particular style, to use specific wording.
- He couched it as a request, but it was an order.
- 2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, The Onion AV Club:
- More significantly, rigid deference to Bieber’s still-young core fan base keeps things resolutely PG, with any acknowledgement of sex either couched in vague “touch your body” workarounds or downgraded to desirous hand-holding and eye-gazing.
- (archaic) To conceal; to hide
- 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Dialogue 2:
- You have overlooked a fallacy couched in the experiment of the stick.
- 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Dialogue 2:
Synonyms [edit]
Translations [edit]
phrase in a particular style
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Etymology 3 [edit]
From quitch, from Old English cwice, from Middle Low German kweke.
Noun [edit]
couch (uncountable)
- couch grass, a species of persistent grass, Elymus repens, usually considered a weed.
Synonyms [edit]
- (Elymus repens): twitch, quick grass, quitch grass, quitch, dog grass, quackgrass, scutch grass, witchgrass
Translations [edit]
- German: Kriech-Quecke (de) f
See also [edit]
Elymus repens on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:Elymus repens