couch

Pluralcouches

Formscouches, couching, couched

1. 1
   nounAustraliaCanadaIrelandUScountable

   A piece of furniture, usually upholstered, made for the comfortable seating of more than one person; a sofa.

   She curled up on the couch with a book and a warm blanket.

   They pushed the two couches together to make more room for guests.

   Similarsofa, settee, divan

   Note

   The everyday furniture word in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland, for the piece others may simply call a sofa. It came through Old French couche from a verb meaning "go to bed, lie down", and cwtch is the same word arriving by a different route. Idioms grow from it, such as the casting couch, or taking analysis "off the couch", which borrows the therapy meaning.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To express something in a particular style or with a specific choice of words.

   The minister couched the bad news in carefully chosen phrases.

   Diplomats often couch their threats as friendly suggestions.

   Similarphrase, express, word, term

   Note

   Today the verb lives mostly in the passive: a letter couched in cool terms, commentary couched in hedges, sex couched in vague workarounds. With as, it names the disguise: "He couched it as a request, but it was an order." Unlike plain express, it hints that the wording was chosen to soften, veil or manage the message.

3. 3
   nounmetonymically

   Psychotherapy, the treatment of emotional or mental difficulties through talking with a therapist.

   After a decade on the couch, he finally confronted the roots of his depression.

   Some patients credit the couch with breakthroughs no medication could deliver.

   Similartherapy, psychotherapy, analysis

   Note

   Almost always "the couch", with the article. Someone is on the couch while in therapy, and a method taken off the couch is used outside the consulting room. The furniture of psychoanalysis has come to stand for the whole practice. Without the article, a reader will picture the sofa instead.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A bed, or any place used for lying down and resting.

   He rose from his couch at first light to tend the fire.

   They prepared a couch of soft moss for the wounded soldier.

   Similarbed

   Note

   The older, poetic bed, at home in verse rather than in the bedroom. Shakespeare sets the "Kingly Couch" against loathsome beds. Bryant and Housman bring it to the grave: one wraps "the drapery of his couch" about him, and the other's sleeper lies "whence he never shall arise." Used today, it lends a scene ceremony, and often a hint of mortality.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To lie down or recline, as on a bed or other place of rest.

   The deer couched among the tall grass to escape the midday heat.

   Travelers would couch wherever they could find shelter for the night.

   Similarrecline

   Note

   The verb's root sense, from Old French se couchier, "go to bed", and ultimately Latin collocāre, "set in place". That makes couch and collocate doublets. Shakespeare couches upon a bed, and in Othello couches with men, a sexual edge worth knowing. In Reality Bites (1994), "eat and couch" turns the verb into lounging on the furniture.

6. 6
   nounfiguratively

   Voters who choose not to vote, typically by staying home instead of going to the polls.

   Strategists blamed the loss on the couch, the voters who simply never showed up.

   Mobilizing the couch became the campaign's single biggest priority.

   Note

   Political commentary turns the stay-at-home voter into a rival candidate: a campaign can "lose to the couch." Like the therapy meaning, it takes the definite article and works only as a figure. It is the shorthand of analysts and strategists, so it suits commentary better than neutral reporting of turnout.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   A persistent grass, Elymus repens, that spreads through underground stems and is usually treated as a weed.

   Farmers dread couch because its roots survive plowing and resprout within days.

   A patch of couch can colonize an entire lawn in a single season.

   Similarquackgrass

   Note

   A different word that only looks like the furniture: it comes from a variant of quitch, Old English cwice. Gardeners and farmers use it as a mass noun, as in a field of couch or a small patch of couch. Its creeping underground shoots let it infest large areas quickly. Couch grass is the unambiguous form when the furniture might confuse a reader.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To lay something upon a bed or other place of rest.

   The nurse couched the injured man upon a low bed of straw.

   Servants would couch their lord upon cushions after the feast.

   Similarlay, place

   Note

   The transitive partner of the "lie down" verb: here someone lays another down to rest. The object can be one's own body, as when Shakespeare's Friar speaks of youth that "doth couch his limbs". It can also be animals, as in Geoffrey Moorhouse's The Fearful Void (1974), where travelers in a storm "couched the beasts" before rolling into their blankets.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To arrange or set things out as though laying them in a bed.

   The gardener couched the bulbs side by side in the prepared soil.

   Masons couch each stone so that it nests against the next.

   Similarset, lay, bed

   Note

   Often reflexive, and often applied to nature rather than to people. In Thomas Burnet's Theory of the Earth (1684), the waters "couch themselves, as close as may be" to the center of the globe. The verb pictures things settling snugly into place, the way a sleeper settles into a bed.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To lay or deposit something in a bed or layer.

    The cook couched the fillets on a bed of sliced lemon before roasting.

    They couch the seedbed compost in even layers before sowing.

    Similarlay, place, spread

    Note

    Here the object is set into a material, not merely laid on it. Francis Bacon, in 1627, describes builders in Gaza who couch earthen pots in their walls to catch the wind and cool rooms in great heat. The verb works where modern English would say bed or embed, and it suits masonry, cookery and gardening.

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