bedfellow
Noun

bedfellow (plural bedfellows)

  1. One with whom one shares a bed.
    Synonyms: bedmate
    • c. 1590–1592, William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act IV, scene v]:
      Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, / Whither away, or where is thy abode? / Happy the parents of so fair a child; / Happier the man whom favourable stars / Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.
    • 1922, Geoffrey Montagu Cookson (transl.), Prometheus Bound, page 203 in Four Plays of Aeschylus.
      Therefore, grave mistresses of fate, I pray
      That I may never live to see the day
      When Zeus takes me for his bedfellow;
  2. An associate, often an otherwise improbable one.
    • 1873 They say that "misfortune makes men acquainted with strange bedfellows". The old hereditary Whig Cabinet ministers must, no doubt, by this time have learned to feel themselves at home with strange neighbours at their elbows. — Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux, [https://web.archive.org/web/20140811201712/http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fpublicsearch%2Fmodengpub.o2w Chapter 40.]



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