couch

An item of furniture, often upholstered, for the comfortable seating of more than one person; a sofa.

At a casting workshop, an actor was performing a blank scene […] and he had not bothered to make any choices about why he was on stage, what his motivation was, what he was playing. He had decided who he was and where he was (on a couch with his girlfriend) but had not decided what he wanted. So the performance was flat and lifeless.

[…] I want to try to describe my efforts to take psychoanalysis as a method off the couch and into the work of creating and using a political conference table.

A bed, a resting-place.

O Sleepe, O gentle Sleepe, […] O thou dull God, why lyeſt thou with the vilde, / In loathſome Beds, and leau'st the Kingly Couch, / A Watch-caſe, or a common Larum-Bell?

[A]pproach thy grave / Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

The den of an otter.

A couch was located under the roots of an uprooted tree in a medium dense spruce patch and the second couch was located under a free standing spruce along a regulation channel.

A preliminary layer, as of colour or size.

For the re-lining, the usual method is to strain a new and strong cloth of an even surface upon the stretcher, to rub it down smooth with pumice stone, and then to give it an even couch of paste, a similar couch is then to be applied to the back of the picture after it has been freed from all inequalities; […]

Once you have chosen which color of underpainting you will use, you should apply the paint to get the values, lighting, and the likeness perfect. The underpainting is applied using a couch of medium and the paint is worked into that medium in very small amounts and in small areas at a time. […] Your paint should glide and then melt into the couch as you work the paint with your brush.

A mass of steeped barley spread upon a floor to germinate, in malting; or the floor occupied by the barley.

a couch of malt

MALTING IN MUNICH. The barley is steeped till the acrospire, in embryo, or seed germ, seems to be quickened; […] As long however as the seed-gum sticks to the husk, it has not been steeped enough for exposure to the underground malt-floor: nor can deficient steeping be safely made up for afterwards by sprinkling the malt couch with a watering can, which is apt to render the malting irregular. […] It [the barley] is now taken out and laid on the couch floor, in a square heap, eight to ten inches high, and it is turned over morning and evening with dexterity, so as to throw the middle portion upon the top and bottom of the new made couch.

To lie down; to recline (upon a couch or other place of repose).

Why did you ſo, doth not the Gentleman / Deſerue as full as fortunate a bed, / As euer Beatrice ſhall couch upon?

I call'd my Loue falſe Loue: but what ſaid he then? / Sing Willough, &c. / If I court mo women, you'le couch with mo men.

To bend the body, as in reverence, pain, labor, etc.; to stoop; to crouch.

At laſt, as thro an open Plain they yode, / They ſpy'd a Knight, that towards pricked fair, / And him beſide an aged Squire there rode, / That ſeem'd to couch under his Shield three-ſquare, / As if that Age bad him that Burden ſpare, / And yield it thoſe that ſtouter could it wield: […]

[T]hen let the Trumpets ſound / The Tucket Sonuance, and the Note to mount: / For our approach ſhall ſo much dare the field, / That England ſhall couch downe in feare, and yeeld.

To lay something upon a bed or other resting place.

But where vnbruſed youth with vnſtuft braine / Doth couch his lims, there, golden ſleepe doth raigne; […]

The storm seemed to have acquired a second wind, blowing as fiercely as in the morning, and at the tree we couched the beasts and started to upload again. We rolled into our blankets once more, and passed more hours sheltering blindly from the blasting of the sand.

To arrange or dispose as if in a bed.

[T]he Sea and the Land make one Globe, and the waters couch themſelves, as cloſe as may be, to the Center of this Globe in a Spherical convexity; ſo that if all the Mountains and Hills were ſcal'd, and the Earth made even, the Waters would not overflow its ſmooth ſurface; […]

To lay or deposit in a bed or layer; to bed.

It is, at this Day, in uſe, in Gaza, to couch Pot-Sheards or Veſſels of Earth, in their Walls, to gather the Wind from the top, and to paſſe it downe in Spouts into Roomes. It is a Device for Freſhneſſe, in great Heats; […]

Couch grass, a species of persistent grass, Elymus repens, usually considered a weed.

The first field it did was one on which Swedes had been roughly planted the year previously, but it had not been touched since the crop was eaten off, and was then a perfect wilderness of Couch, Docks, Thistles, and Dandelions.

After he knew that he would have to give up the farm in two years he ploughed it up, had a thin crop of oats, and sowed it again with winter oats. In February, 1914, it was a field of couch.