Word.ws English Dictionary

bed blockers

bed blockers is the plural of bed blocker.

Meaning of bed blocker

Noun

bed blocker (plural bed blockers)

  1. (UK, derogatory, idiomatic, public policy) An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities.
    • A 72-year-old "bed blocker" was yesterday ordered to vacate the hospital bed he has refused to leave for three years, despite being in good health.2006 March 7, Jacqueline Maley, “Court evicts NHS 'bed blocker'”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 02 Dec 2012

Questions about bed blockers

What is bed blockers the plural of?
Bed blockers is the plural of bed blocker.

Words near bed blockers in the dictionary

  1. bed and breakfast
  2. bed and breakfasts
  3. bed bath
  4. bed baths
  5. bed blocker
  6. bed blockers
  7. bed blocking
  8. bed blockings
  9. bed breaking
  10. bed bug
  11. bed bugs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bed blockers (page history and authors); bed blocker (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bed blockers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bed_blockers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.