abed

See also: Abed and abêd

English

Etymology

From Middle English abedde, o bedde, from Old English on (“in”) + bedde (“bed”). Equivalent to a- (“in, on”) +‎ bed.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈbɛd/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (Canada):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈbɛd/
• Rhymes: -ɛd

Adverb

abed (not comparable)(archaic)

1. In bed, or on the bed; confined to bed. [First attested from 1150 to 1350.]
   • c. 1564–1616, William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, iii:

     Not to be abed after midnight

   • 1883, Adele Marion Fielde, “倒 (tó̤)”, in A pronouncing and defining dictionary of the Swatow dialect, arranged according to syllables and tones, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, page 560:

     [She] is sick abed.

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./4/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:

     The world was awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the menials of Mayfair lie long abed.

   • 1948, Alan Paton, chapter 12, in Cry, the Beloved Country, London: Jonathan Cape:

     Who can lie peacefully abed, while the darkness holds some secret?

   • 2026, Michael Falk, “Wikilambda the ultimate: the Wikimedia foundation’s search for the perfect language”, in AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication, →DOI:

     In the future, most crucially, Wikilambda will continue to be debugged and extended by its core developers. They will need to understand the structure and intent of the software, and their understanding will affect the future course of the project. They will understand Wikilambda’s structure and intent using abstractions. They will encounter these abstractions in the source code, in the documentation, in the conversation of their workmates, in textbooks, in blogs, at conferences, or abed on sleepless nights puzzling over fiendish bugs.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:abed.
2. On a childbed.
   • c. 1564–1616, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, IV, ii:

     I mean, she's brought a-bed

Derived terms

• lie-abed
• pissabed
• sick-abed
• slugabed

Translations

in bed, or on the bed

• Bulgarian: на легло (na leglo)
• Czech: v posteli
• Dutch: te bed, bedlegerig (nl)
• Finnish: vuoteessa (fi), sängyssä (fi)
• French: au lit (fr)
• German: zu Bett, im Bett
• Italian: a letto
• Norwegian: i seng
• Portuguese: deitado (na cama)
• Russian: в посте́ли (v postéli)
• Spanish: en cama, acostado (es)
• Turkish: yatakta (tr)
• Woiwurrung: karenboon

Anagrams

• adeb, bade, baed, bead

Scots

Verb

abed

1. simple past tense of ab (“to hinder”)