DEATHBED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does deathbed mean? 

• DEATHBED (noun)
  The noun DEATHBED has 2 senses:

1. the last few hours before death

2. the bed on which a person dies

  Familiarity information: DEATHBED used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEATHBED (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The last few hours before death

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("deathbed" is a kind of...):

time of life (a period of time during which a person is normally in a particular life state)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The bed on which a person dies

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("deathbed" is a kind of...):

bed (a piece of furniture that provides a place to sleep)

 Context examples 

The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“Your own deathbeds, when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace which you have given to mine.”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It was very hard that she was not to have her own knife; it was her own knife; little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by a knock at the door.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father's bosom—when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: Who is that?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)