bed
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bed", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bed" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bed" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bed is aEnglishnoun. It means: A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep. Pronounced /ˈbɛd/. It ranks #893 in English word frequency. Often confused with by and bi.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈbɛd/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #893 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bed is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbɛd/. Corpus data places it at rank #893 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 27 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for bed in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bi", "BS", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *badją Proto-West Germanic *badi Old English bedd Middle English bed English bed Inherited from Middle English bed, bedde, from Old English bedd, from Proto-West Germanic *badi, from Proto-Germanic *badją (“resting-place, plot … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bed, spelled B-E-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 2A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 3A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 4A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 5A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 6A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 7A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 8A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 9A piece of furniture, usually flat and soft, on which to rest or sleep.
- 10A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 11A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 12A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 13A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 14A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 15A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 16A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 17A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 18A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 19A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 20A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 21A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 22A place, or flat surface or layer, on which something else rests or is laid.
- 23A horizontal layer or surface.
- 24A horizontal layer or surface.
- 25A horizontal layer or surface.
- 26A horizontal layer or surface.
- 27A horizontal layer or surface.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *badją Proto-West Germanic *badi Old English bedd Middle English bed English bed Inherited from Middle English bed, bedde, from Old English bedd, from Proto-West Germanic *badi, from Proto-Germanic *badją (“resting-place, plot of ground”). Cognates Cognate with Scots bed, North Frisian baad, beed, Bēr, Saterland Frisian Bääd, West Frisian bêd, Cimbrian pett, Dutch bed, Dutch Low Saxon bedde, German Bett, Bette, German Low German Bedd, Luxembourgish Bett, Vilamovian bet, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål bed, Faroese and Icelandic beð, beður, Norwegian Nynorsk bed, bedd, Swedish bädd, Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌳𐌹 (badi), all meaning “bed”. further possible etymology and cognates The Proto-Germanic term may in turn be from Proto-Indo-European *bʰedʰ- (“to dig”) with various theories explaining the development in meaning. If it is, the term is also cognate with Ancient Greek βοθυρος (bothuros, “pit”), Latin fossa (“ditch”), Latvian bedre (“hole”), Welsh bedd (“grave”), Breton bez (“grave”); and probably also Russian бодать (bodatʹ, “to butt, gore”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #893 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: