counterpane

counterpane

English

Etymology

Corrupted from counterpoint, from the employment of pane (“a shaped figure in a coverlet”).

Noun

counterpane (plural counterpanes)

1. (dated) The topmost covering of a bed, often functioning as a blanket; a coverlet, bedspread.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 4:

     My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side.

   • 1915, W.S. Maugham, "Of Human Bondage":

     When he had got a light he saw that she had taken away all her things and the baby's .. and all the things on the washing-stand had been broken, a knife had been drawn cross-ways through the seats of the two chairs, the pillow had been slit open, there were large gashes in the sheets and the counterpane, the looking-glass appeared to have been broken with a hammer.

   • 1941 September, Charles E. Lee, “Sheltering in London Tube Stations”, in Railway Magazine, page 389:

     [...] the Westminster City Council has arranged with a large firm of launderers to wash blankets, sheets, pillow cases, and counterpanes, at low standard prices, and to return them the same day.

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, TWO.VII:

         He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-smelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a white counterpane. [...]
         [...] His mind went back to another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother had sat on the dingy white-quilted bed, with the child clinging to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath him and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking up at him in the darkening water.

Synonyms

• bedcover, bedspread

Translations

topmost covering of a bed — see bedspread

coverlet — see coverlet

References

• “counterpane”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.