Word.ws English Dictionary

feather bed

feather bed is the alternative form of featherbed.

Meaning of featherbed

Noun

featherbed (plural featherbeds)

  1. A mattress stuffed with feathers.
  2. (UK, especially) An area of bog where a layer of moss covers a pool of water or mud, presenting a hazard to walkers who may fall through it. (Also in UK and Irish placenames.)
    • There are mires, bogs, and 'featherbeds' or quaking bogs. With the first two, look for the tussocks of heavy grass or rushes around the edges, which offer a relatively firm footing, but if you see a stretch of bright green sphagnum moss, for God's sake stay away from it. The moss is a mat covering...2014 March 17, Laurie R. King, The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor, Macmillan, →ISBN
  3. A soft, slow pitch of predictable bounce.

See all 5 meanings of featherbed

Forms of feather bed

pluralfeather beds

Questions about feather bed

What is feather bed the alternative form of?
Feather bed is the alternative form of featherbed.

Words near feather bed in the dictionary

  1. feateous
  2. feater
  3. featest
  4. feather
  5. feather alum
  6. feather bed
  7. feather beds
  8. feather boa
  9. feather boa kelp
  10. feather boa kelps
  11. feather boas

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.

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