Also 8 beder. [f. BED v. or sb. + -ER1. With sense 2, cf. hedger, potter; with 3, cf. header, drawer.]
1. One who puts to bed; one who litters cattle.
c. 1612. Fletcher, Thierry, I. 450. All your guilded knaves, brokers, and bedders.
† 2. A bed-maker, an upholsterer. Obs. or dial.
1803. S. Pegge, Anecd. Eng. Lang., 273. Upholsterer, Called … in some parts of the kingdom … a bedder.
3. The lower stone in an oil-mill; the bed-stone.
1611. Cotgr., Gisant d’vn moulin, the Bed, Bedder, or under-millstone.
1706. Phillips, Bedder, bedetter, the neither-stone of an Oil-mill.
1755. in Johnson: and in mod. Dicts.
4. A plant adapted for being grown in a flower bed; a ‘bedding-out plant.’
1862. Times, 10 April, 12/1. Plants … possessing the properties required in ‘bedders,’ that is, if adapted to form masses of uniform colour.
1882. Garden, 21 Jan., 34/1. It will be a new sensation … to grow bedders on rockwork.
5. (See quot.)
1879. C. Hibbs, Jewellery, in Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 309/1. It was the custom formerly to lay a heavy block of iron, called a ‘bedder,’ on the two metals and strike upon it with sledge hammers until … the contact was complete.
