bedfast
"bedfast" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bedfast” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Unable to leave one's bed, especially because of illness, weakness or obesity.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bedfast · bedfast · English
bedfast · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bedfast |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “bedfast” in English
Rare enough to double-check
bedfast is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Unable to leave one's bed, especially because of illness, weakness or obesity.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for bedfast, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From bed + fast. The correct English form is bedfast, spelled B-E-D-F-A-S-T.
Definition
- 1Unable to leave one's bed, especially because of illness, weakness or obesity.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bedfast appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
1796, Robert Burns, letter written to Mr. Cunningham, 7 July, 1796, in The Prose Works of Robert Burns; Containing his Letters and Correspondence, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Mackenzie & Dent, 1819, p. 278 https://books.google.ca/books?id=gzYBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false For these eight or ten months I have been ailing, sometimes bedfast and…
1948, Robert Heinlein, Space Cadet (1948), from the edition reissued in 1975 by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC: p. 118, lines 13 through 15. "She had been a very active woman... Now she was bed-fast and had been for three years."
Etymology
From bed + fast.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.