Word.ws English Dictionary

bedful

bedful noun: the amount that can fit in a bed.

Noun

bedful (plural bedfuls or bedsful)

  1. The amount that can fit in a bed.
    • He and Bob in one low bed and Tom and Joe in the other—one bedful used to be jealous of the other bedful if it had more snow on its blue-and-white coverlet in the morning.1926, The Outlook - Volume 144, page 335
    • In a bedful of petunias, a hollow groan.1950, Time - Volume 56, page 82
  2. A sexual encounter.
    • Nothing but an opium dream could transform the bare walls and the dirty cotton curtains into an Oriental palace with silken drapes and bedfuls of lovely daughters of the East.1948, Collier's: Incorporating Features of the American Magazine, page 133
    • I recently heard in reference to a newly married couple: “Them two'll make pert near a bedful.”2009, Ted Olson, Anthony P. Cavender, A Tennessee Folklore Sampler

Examples of bedful in a sentence

  • "It looked like a bedful of the plant, I acknowledge." "A bedful: yes, sir, six bedfuls!1967, John William De Forest, James Bascom Durham, The Complete Short Stories of John William De Forest:
  • Jack would wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me to go in there and look at the baby asleep in a bedful of dogs.1997, Kaye Gibbons, A Virtuous Woman: A Novel:
  • On the plus side, being back in Stepney meant well-rounded platefuls of his wife's cooking and a well-rounded bedful of his well-rounded wife.2012, John Lawton, Second Violin:

Forms of bedful

pluralbedfuls
pluralbedsful

Origin of bedful

From bed + -ful.

Questions about bedful

What does bedful mean?
Bedful means the amount that can fit in a bed.
How do you use bedful in a sentence?
"It looked like a bedful of the plant, I acknowledge." "A bedful: yes, sir, six bedfuls!
What part of speech is bedful?
Bedful is a noun.
What is the plural of bedful?
The plural of bedful is bedfuls.

Words near bedful in the dictionary

  1. Bedfordshire clangers
  2. bedform
  3. bedforms
  4. bedframe
  5. bedframes
  6. bedful
  7. bedfuls
  8. Bedgebury
  9. Bedgebury Cross
  10. Bedgerabong
  11. bedgoer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bedful (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bedful.wav.

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