a., orig. sb. Forms: 1–2 bedreda (-rida), 4 bederede, 4–5 bedrede, 4–8 bedred, 5 -ered, beedered, 6 beddred, bedread, -reed, -ridde, 7 beddered, -ridde, 6– bedrid. [OE. bedreda, -rida, f. bed bed + rida rider, f. rídan to ride. LG. has, in same sense, bedderede, -redig; the dulling of the atonic vowel in OE. is frequent in forms like misleca, for mislíca, etc.]
1. Confined to bed through sickness or infirmity. The usual prose form is now BEDRIDDEN.
c. 1000. Thorpe’s Hom., II. 422 (Bosw.). Ðǽr læʓ be ðám weʓe án bedreda. Ibid., I. 472. Drihten cwæþ to sumum bedridan.
c. 1340. Richard Rolle of Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 6198. Seke I was, and bedred lay.
c. 1430. How Gd. Wife taught Dau., 19, in Babees Bk. (1868), 37. Þe poore & þe beedered, loke þou not loþe.
1535. Act 27 Hen. VIII., xxv. All leprouse and pore beddred creatures.
1565. Jewell, Repl. Harding (1611), 393. Lying Bed-read many yeeres for sicknesse of Body.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., I. i. 139. To her decrepit, sicke, and bed-rid Father.
a. 1626. Bp. Andrewes, Serm., xix. (1661), 430. Clinici Christiani, beddered Christians.
1765. Wesley, in Wks. (1872), III. 207. He is … now quite bed-rid.
1815. Southey, Roderick, I. 141. Bed-rid infirmity alone was left behind.
2. fig. Worn out, decrepit, impotent.
1621. Quarles, Argalus & P. (1678), 73. Whose richly furnish’d Table would invite A bedrid stomack to an appetite.
1641. Milton, Animadv., Wks. (1851), 217. What an over-worne and bedrid Argument is this.
1822. Hazlitt, Table-t., I. vi. 130. In danger of being bed-rid in his faculties.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. I. III. vii. 75. Orthodoxy, bedrid as she seemed.
