cowch

Noun

couch (plural couches)

1. (Australia, Canada, Ireland, US) An item of furniture, often upholstered, for the comfortable seating of more than one person; a sofa.
   • At a casting workshop, an actor was performing a blank scene […] and he had not bothered to make any choices about why he was on stage, what his motivation was, what he was playing. He had decided who he was and where he was (on a couch with his girlfriend) but had not decided what he wanted. So...2009, Nancy Bishop, Secrets from the Casting Couch: On Camera Strategies for Actors from a Casting Director, London: Methuen Drama, A & C Black, →ISBN

   Synonyms:

   davenport, divan, settee, sofa

2. A bed, a resting-place.
   • O Sleepe, O gentle Sleepe, […] O thou dull God, why lyeſt thou with the vilde, / In loathſome Beds, and leau'st the Kingly Couch, / A Watch-caſe, or a common Larum-Bell?1596–1599, William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, Containing his Death: and the Coronation of King Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, &...
3. The den of an otter.
   • A couch was located under the roots of an uprooted tree in a medium dense spruce patch and the second couch was located under a free standing spruce along a regulation channel.1998, Kevin Roche, First Phase Report of the Třeboň Otter Project
4. (painting and gilding) A preliminary layer, as of colour or size.
   • For the re-lining, the usual method is to strain a new and strong cloth of an even surface upon the stretcher, to rub it down smooth with pumice stone, and then to give it an even couch of paste, a similar couch is then to be applied to the back of the picture after it has been freed from all...1839, Jean-François-Léonor Mérimée, W[illiam] B[enjamin] Sarsfield Taylor, “On the Preservation of Pictures, and the Methods Used for Restoring Them”, in The Art of Painting in Oil, and in Fresco...
5. A mass of steeped barley spread upon a floor to germinate, in malting; or the floor occupied by the barley.
   • a couch of malt
6. (metonymically, usually) Psychotherapy.
   • He spent years on the couch going over his traumatic childhood.

See all 21 meanings of couch