Word.ws English Dictionary

four-poster

four-poster adjective: having four vertical columns, one in each corner, that support a tester, so that curtains can be hung to exclude draughts from the sleeper.

four-poster: having four vertical columns, one in each corner, that support a tester, so that curtains can be...
Image: Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

four-poster (not comparable)

  1. (attributive) Having four vertical columns, one in each corner, that support a tester, so that curtains can be hung to exclude draughts from the sleeper.
    • The furnishing of this Blue Room was solid and Victorian, it having been the GHQ of my Uncle Tom's late father, who liked things substantial. There was a four-poster bed, [...]1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VIII

Noun

four-poster (plural four-posters)

  1. A four-poster bed, which has four high posts, one at each corner, supporting a canopy.
    • ... the bed, an immense four-poster with different rosewood fruits carved crudely on its high headboard, was suffocatingly soft and his body had sunk deep in its feathery center.1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 2
    • Wooden beds were made as replicas of large ones, some carved in walnut, others in mahogany and with elaborate head-pieces. There were four-posters draped with curtains to pull and bedspreads to match, much beautiful hand-sewing and embroidery going to their manufacture.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 214
    Synonyms:
    four-poster bed

Synonyms of four-poster

Forms of four-poster

pluralfour-posters

Phrases with four-poster

Questions about four-poster

What does four-poster mean?
Four-poster means having four vertical columns, one in each corner, that support a tester, so that curtains can be hung to exclude draughts from the sleeper.
What part of speech is four-poster?
Four-poster can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near four-poster in the dictionary

  1. four-point Calvinist
  2. four-point Calvinists
  3. four-pointed
  4. four-pointing
  5. four-points
  6. four-poster
  7. four-poster bed
  8. four-poster beds
  9. four-posters
  10. four-pounder
  11. four-pounders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: four-poster (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-four-poster.wav.

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