Word.ws English Dictionary

feather-bed

feather-bed is the alternative spelling of featherbed.

Meaning of featherbed

Verb

featherbed (third-person singular simple present featherbeds, present participle featherbedding, simple past and past participle featherbedded)

  1. (transitive) To treat someone with excessive indulgence; to pamper, cosset or mollycoddle.
  2. (intransitive) To engage in featherbedding; to employ more workers than necessary to fulfill a labor union requirement.

See all 5 meanings of featherbed

Forms of feather-bed

third-person singular presentfeather-beds
present participlefeather-bedding
past participlefeather-bedded
pastfeather-bedded

Questions about feather-bed

What is feather-bed the alternative spelling of?
Feather-bed is the alternative spelling of featherbed.

Words near feather-bed in the dictionary

  1. feather stick
  2. feather sticks
  3. feather tree
  4. feather trees
  5. feather wool
  6. feather-bed
  7. feather-bedded
  8. feather-bedding
  9. feather-beds
  10. feather-brain
  11. feather-brained

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: feather-bed (page history and authors); featherbed (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.

Last updated:

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