featherbed
"featherbed" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“featherbed” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A mattress stuffed with feathers.
Corpus desk
Index EN-featherbed · featherbed · English
featherbed · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" 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 | featherbed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “featherbed” in English
Rare enough to double-check
featherbed is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for featherbed, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From feather + bed. The correct English form is featherbed, spelled F-E-A-T-H-E-R-B-E-D.
Definition
- 1A mattress stuffed with feathers.
- 2An area of bog where a layer of moss covers a pool of water or mud, presenting a hazard to walkers who may fall through it. (Also in UK and Irish placenames.)
- 3A soft, slow pitch of predictable bounce.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how featherbed appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
There are mires, bogs, and 'featherbeds' or quaking bogs. With the first two, look for the tussocks of heavy grass or rushes around the edges, which offer a relatively firm footing, but if you see a stretch of bright green sphagnum moss, for God's sake stay away from it. The moss is a mat covering a pit of wet ooze; […]
[…] bog. The writers and the old fellows you meet in pubs will tell you to look out for grass or 'bright green areas', and to fear the land that looks the easiest; but bogs - 'featherbeds', the locals call them - might be marked[…]
Etymology
From feather + bed.
This word in other languages
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.