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Featherbed   /fˈɛðərbˌɛd/   Listen
Featherbed

verb
1.
Treat with excessive indulgence.  Synonyms: baby, cocker, coddle, cosset, indulge, mollycoddle, pamper, spoil.  "Let's not mollycoddle our students!"
2.
Hire more workers than are necessary.
noun
1.
A mattress stuffed with feathers.  Synonym: feather bed.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Featherbed" Quotes from Famous Books



... Germans, and can even put up with their eternal smoking, tho' no smoker myself, but to their beds I shall never be reconciled. A German bed is as follows: a paillasse, over that a mattress, then a featherbed with a sheet fastened to it, and over that again another featherbed with a sheet fastened to it; and thus you lie between two featherbeds; but these are not always of sufficient length, and you are often obliged to coil up your legs or be exposed to have them frozen by their extending beyond ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... to work a steel hauberk out of bards of flax. But here is to you, father," he added, in a more cheerful tone; "and here is to my fair saint and Valentine, as I hope your Catharine will be mine for the season. And let me not keep your old head longer from the pillow, but make interest with your featherbed till daybreak; and then you must be my guide to your daughter's chamber door, and my apology for entering it, to bid her good morrow, for the brightest that the sun will awaken, in the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... hair tumblin' out of her net, a trig little figger, and a pair of the neatest feet and ankles that ever stepped. 'Pretty,' thinks I; 'so far so good.' The way she whacked the pillers, shooked the blankets, and pitched into the beds was a caution; specially one blunderin' old featherbed that wouldn't do nothin' but sag round in a pig-headed sort of way, that would have made most girls get mad and give up. Kitty didn't, but just wrastled with it like a good one, till she got it turned, banged, and spread to suit her; then she ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... it. I only remember her 'long towards her last. She wan't heavin' any teakittles at folks then; my savin' soul, no! She used to set in a big rockin'-chair over by the stove and was all puffed-up like—like a featherbed, you might say; and she'd kind of doze along and doze along and you could holler your head off and she wouldn't pay no attention, and then she'd kind of wake up, as you might say, and sing out, 'Hey? What say?' just like Mr. Bangs, for all the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... be sure I don't. Why, when folks hear the old fashioned cry of Mrs. Landlady! Mrs. Landlady! who do they expect, think you, to see, but an overgrown, fat, featherbed of a woman, coming waddling along with her thumbs sticking on each side of her apron, o' this fashion? Now, to see me coming, nobody would take ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... looking to his feet, by high or low, The beast of craven kind, with headlong force Three miles in rings had gone, and more would go, But that into a fosse which stopt their course, Not lined with featherbed or quilt below, Tumble, reversed, the rider and his horse. On the hard ground was Mandricardo thrown, Yet neither spoiled himself, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of mere scepticism, are unable to follow ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley



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