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Bedfellow   /bˈɛdfˌɛloʊ/   Listen
Bedfellow

noun
1.
A temporary associate.
2.
A person with whom you share a bed.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bedfellow" Quotes from Famous Books



... However, he did not long hesitate: for being perfectly well acquainted with my grandfather's disposition, he knew it would be to no purpose to attempt him by prayers and entreaties. So without any further application, he betook himself with his disconsolate bedfellow to a farmhouse, where an old servant of his mother dwelt. In this ill-adapted situation they remained for some time, until my mother, hoping that her tears and condition would move my grandfather to compassion, went, in disguise, to the house, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... And then she went off and left him; for he was not lustful, nor an agreeable bedfellow to spend the night with. Now a woman delights in being wantonly treated. But you are an old dotard. For (to Phidippides) consider, O youth, all that attaches to modesty, and of how many pleasures you are about to be deprived—of women, of ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... lepers; they have houses of wattled reeds, and none may come nigh them. The beggars wander through the cities, and eat their food with the dogs. Canst thou make these things not to be? Wilt thou take the leper for thy bedfellow, and set the beggar at thy board? Shall the lion do thy bidding, and the wild boar obey thee? Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art? Wherefore I praise thee not for this that thou hast done, but I bid thee ride back to the Palace ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... or my fishing-rod smashed; and I made a regular fool of myself in the morning of the eventful day by getting up first at two a.m., then at three, then at four, and four or five times more, to take observations out of the window, till at last my bedfellow declared he would stand it no longer, and that since I was ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... doth the crown lie there upon his pillow Being so troublesome a bedfellow? O polished perturbation! golden care! That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night!—Sleep with it now, Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggin bound Snores out the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... him! When I was a girl, I hadn't bread to eat, or a shoe to my foot, and to get away from that wretchedness I was tempted by Alyoshka's money, and got caught like a fish in a net, and I'd rather have a viper for my bedfellow than that scurvy Alyoshka. And what's your life? It makes me sick to look at it. Your Fyodor sent you packing from the factory and he's taken up with another woman. They have robbed you of your boy and made a slave of him. You work like a horse, and ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the veld,' he said,' it is not the time to remember a promise to a girl. It is easier to find a bedfellow than a blanket sometimes. And then, I am to be considered, and I cannot suffer this ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... friends, set forth by old Thomas Heywoode, in his "Nine Books of Various History concerning Women," published at London in 1624. A certain sinless maiden, called Bona, "who lived a retired life in a house of religious Nunnes, had a bedfellow, unto whom, above all others, she was tied, lying on her death-bed, and no help to be devised for her recovery." This Bona, being herself in perfect health, besought the Almighty, that she might not survive her friend; ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... ever so much inclined to good husbandry, cannot always do his kitchen-work himself, suppose him a bachelor, or can his wife, suppose him married, and suppose her to have brought him any portion, be his bedfellow and his cook too. These maid-servants, then, are to be considered, and are an exceeding tax upon house-keepers; those who were formerly hired at three pounds to four pounds a-year wages, now demand five, six and eight pounds a-year; nor ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... from her little bedfellow at last without waking her. She knew that the others had gone to get a tree for little Scrub, and she knew that a tree was just no tree at all without plenty of things to hang upon it. So she went to work, and by the time Jack opened the door she had a great deal done. It was astonishing ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... call you her? Ay, Cicely. I hear the Scottish Queen hath been cockering her up and making her her bedfellow, till she hath spoilt her for a reasonable maiden. Is it so? She ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and to express my gratitude; but the language I used seemed so different from his that I was disconcerted and pained at my awkwardness without being able to realize why. To crown my misery, a movement that I made caused the knife which I had taken as bedfellow to fall at M. de Mauprat's feet. He picked it up, looked at it, and then at myself with extreme surprise. I turned as red as fire and stammered out I know not what. I expected he would reprove me for this insult to his hospitality. However, he was too polite to insist upon a more complete ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... me," Dalaber says, "that I forgot to make clean my hose and shoes, and to shift me into another gown; and all bedirted as I was, I went to the said prior's chamber." The prior asked him where he had slept that night. At Alban's Hall, he answered, with his old bedfellow, Fitzjames. The prior said he did not believe him, and asked if Garret had been at his rooms the day before. He replied that he had. Whither had he gone, then? the prior inquired; and where was he at ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... be better so, For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen, Murder her brother is her bedfellow, And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; Better the empty desert and a ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... he abhors the palpable, and doats upon the occult and intangible; he loves to speculate on the doings of those in the dogstar, to discuss on immortal essences, to dispute with the disbeliever on gnomes—a paradox will be the darling of his bosom for a month, and a good chimera be his bedfellow by night and theme by day for a year. He is fickle, and casts off his menial mistress at an hour's notice—his mind never weds any of the strange, fantastic idealities, which he woos for a time so passionately—deep disgust succeeds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various

... night Wanted a spell to cast me into slumber; Yet when the weight of my own thoughts grew heavy For my tear dropping eyes, and drew these curtains, My dreams were still of thee—forgive my blushes— And in imagination thou wert then My harmless bedfellow. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... with this new manner of living, by which he taught me I might insure myself an eternal reward in a future state. The saint was a good-natured man, and never gave me an ill word but once, which was occasioned by my neglecting to place Aristophanes, which was his constant bedfellow, on his pillow. He was, indeed, extremely fond of that Greek poet, and frequently made me read his comedies to him. When I came to any of the loose passages he would smile, and say, 'It was pity his matter was not as pure as his style;' of which latter he was so immoderately ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... he crawled barely out, and, kneeling, put up a most cautious groping hand, the bed being in the darkest part of the room; someone there: and swiftly as a dolphin twists to dart and snap, his knife was in a breast and instantly ready to strike its expected bedfellow. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... dream, Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem: From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge Of our bedfellow ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... which appears between the fingers, and under the joints of the knees and elbows; and that which seldom is seen in these places, but all over the other parts of the body. The latter is seldom thought to be the itch, as it does not easily infect even a bedfellow, and resists the usual ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... thy bedfellow, scratch thee?" asked one, "and didst thou outdo him, for this morning he was not to be found ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... Man hath come to the Door, when another hath been within with his Wife, there being no way to escape, the Woman has took a pan of hot ashes, and as she opened the Door, her Husband being entring, cast them in his Eyes, and so she and her Bedfellow ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... determination seemed to puzzle the Indian and his squaw sadly. They looked at one another, and conversed softly in their own language; and at length, the squaw taking her guest by the hand, led her to her couch and became her bedfellow. ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... fifteen years, leaving its ineffaceable imprint upon their faces. They had stubble beards upon their chins, and their cheeks were sunken and hollow, after short rations in the trenches and sleepless nights on the battlefields, with death as their bedfellow. Their blue coats had changed to a dusty grey. Their scarlet trousers had deep patches of crimson, where the blood of comrades had splashed them. They were tattered and torn and foul with the muck and slime of their frontier ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs



Words linked to "Bedfellow" :   person, mortal, associate, someone, somebody, individual, soul



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