feather bed

Meanings

1. 1nouncountableold-fashioned

   A thick, soft mattress or pad stuffed with feathers, laid over a bed frame or on top of another mattress for extra softness.

   Grammar: Has a plural: two feather beds. Often shortened to featherbed in older texts.

   Patterns

   • sleep on a feather bed

   My great-grandmother stored her wedding feather bed in a cedar chest.

   We sank into the feather bed and fell asleep within minutes.

   Farmhouse inns once advertised a clean feather bed as a luxury.

2. 2nounsingularfigurativeinformal

   A comfortable, sheltered situation in which someone is protected from difficulty or hard work.

   Grammar: Used in the singular, usually with a: his job was a feather bed.

   Patterns

   • a feather bed for someone

   Critics said the generous subsidy was a feather bed for inefficient farms.

   After years in a protected post, the move to private business was no feather bed.

3. 3verbtransitiveBritishdisapproving

   To treat someone too gently by shielding them from problems or hardship, or to protect an industry with special help.

   Grammar: Takes an object: feather-bed the young players.

   Patterns

   • feather-bed someone
   • feather-bed an industry

   Some parents feather-bed their grown children by paying every bill.

   The government was accused of feather-bedding the steel industry.

   You cannot feather-bed a new employee forever.

Word forms

Common combinations

a goose-down feather bed

The guest room had a goose-down feather bed piled with quilts.

sleep on a feather bed

She loved to sleep on a feather bed in winter.

no feather bed

Running a small restaurant is no feather bed.

feather-bed an industry

Critics argued that tariffs only feather-bed an industry that should modernize.

a feather bed of subsidies

The company lived on a feather bed of subsidies for decades.

Synonyms and how they differ

featherbed

This is just the closed spelling of the noun and is more common in American writing, while the two-word form feels slightly more traditional.

mattress

A mattress is the general word for any sleeping pad, whereas a feather bed specifically means a feather-filled layer.

cushy job

This phrase is informal and describes an easy position, while feather bed in the figurative sense stresses protection from hardship.

pamper

As a verb, pamper focuses on indulgent care for a person, while feather-bed suggests shielding someone or something from necessary difficulty.

Opposites

Word family

featherbedding noun

the practice of protecting jobs or industries by artificial means

feathery adjective

light and soft like feathers

feather noun

one of the light covering parts of a bird

bedding noun

sheets, blankets and covers used on a bed

Commonly confused: feather bed or featherweight?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “feather bed”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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