Crossword clues for featherbed
The Collaborative International Dictionary
featherbed \featherbed\ n. 1. a mattress stuffed with feathers.
Syn: feather bed.
Wiktionary
alt. (label en transitive) To treat someone with excessive indulgence; to pamper, cosset or mollycoddle n. A mattress stuffed with feathers vb. (label en transitive) To treat someone with excessive indulgence; to pamper, cosset or mollycoddle
WordNet
n. a mattress stuffed with feathers [syn: feather bed]
v. treat with excessive indulgence; "grandparents often pamper the children"; "Let's not mollycoddle our students!" [syn: pamper, cosset, cocker, baby, coddle, mollycoddle, spoil, indulge]
hire more workers than are necessary
[also: featherbedding, featherbedded]
Wikipedia
A featherbed is a type of bedding traditionally used on top of mattresses to help make them softer. They can be made either with feathers, down, or a combination of both materials. Such a bed should be frequently shaken out or fluffed, to keep the feathers evenly distributed.
Featherbeds were only for the rich in the 14th century, but by the 19th century they were a comfort that ordinary people could aspire to - especially if they kept a few geese. The beds, also called feather ticks or feather mattresses, were valuable possessions. People made wills promising them to the next generation; emigrants, travelling to the New World from Europe, packed up bulky featherbeds and took them on the voyage.
Feathers for a featherbed could be saved from geese or ducks being prepared for cooking. In England servant-girls were often allowed to keep feathers from poultry they'd plucked, and could save them to make a featherbed or pillows for their future married life. Live birds might have their soft downy breast feathers harvested three or four times a year, as described in an account from 20th century Missouri. Some poultry feathers were undesirable for mattress-making, especially chicken feathers. The best featherbeds were filled with a high proportion of down; larger feathers needed to have their quills clipped.
Lengthy preparation and good aftercare were essential. Before use, all feathers and down had to be aired outdoors in sun and breeze or stoved indoors in a warm dry space; this would reduce smell and eliminate moisture. Even so, there could be what Harriet Beecher Stowe called "the strong odour of a new feather-bed and pillows". The big London furniture store Heal & Son offered to clean and "purify" old beds with new steam machinery. They said this would remove the "offensive properties of the quill" and also the "unpleasant smell of the stove" which affected all feathers prepared the usual way. They claimed the process would expand and bulk up feathers to make the bed much softer.
Feather ticks were not often used alone, but were laid over a firmer, non-feather mattress, where a white feather mattress is spread on top of the striped under-mattress. Because the mattresses were just bags with no inner structure, they needed shaking and re-shaping every morning. Learning to plump and smooth the bed well was one of the arts of housekeeping.
Featherbeds were criticised by a few 19th century writers who felt they were unhealthy: too warm, too soft, and too self-indulgent. Florence Nightingale said "Never use a feather bed, either for sick or well". Some people chose to put their feather tick under a straw, horsehair or flock mattress in order to have a firmer or cooler bed.
Usage examples of "featherbed".
He plodded the few steps over to the featherbed, took the spot nearest the wall, wrapped one of the blankets around himself, and sank down onto the mattress.
With that to warn him, Lan hastily finished his breakfast and put on his cloak, while Tuck helped the innkeeper get the featherbed back up into the loft.
Between the food, the almost full tub of steaming water, and the featherbed, she was in hog heaven.
The featherbed was soft and warm against her bare skin, and she thought of the firm, hard hospital bed and shuddered.
Cecil flattered and cajoled him, portrayed England as a place of civility and charm, a featherbed into which James could at last relax after all the stony travails of his Scottish youth.
James himself was something of a drinker - he liked the heady, sweet malmseys from southern Greece, a featherbed of a drink - but there was no keeping up with Christian and his Danes.
Dressed only in her fine lawn undergown, she sat on the featherbed and kicked off her satin slippers.
Kief and Tasha transferred Tarlna from it to the featherbed that had been brought outside.
There the magnificently overstuffed featherbed welcomed him with outstretched pillows.
Asha took the little featherbed that had been crammed onto the window seat in the dormer at the narrow end.
Moreover, Madame, learning of her indisposition, not only gave up her own featherbed to her, but made her a tisane, and showed herself to be in general so full of sympathy that the ill-used beauty, in spite of aching head and limbs, began to feel very much more cheerful, and even expressed a desire to have her child brought to kiss her before he went to bed.
Once he opened the window and flung himself down on a pile of featherbeds and comforters, it was rather pleasant up in the attic.
Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air, he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until he should emerge about noon, like some sleek, fat moth.
They had rested then on clean featherbeds, awaking refreshed when their young guides came for them.
The Eika slept, sprawled across the stone as if it were the softest of featherbeds to them.