Other forms: bedfellows
A bedfellow is somebody sharing a bed, or an unlikely partner. Strange bedfellows, make odd bedfellows, political bedfellows.
The figurative sense is the living one and appears almost only as strange bedfellows, meaning two people or ideas nobody expected together. The phrase is Shakespeare's, from a line about misery acquainting a man with strange bedfellows.
1nounbedfellowSomebody sharing a bed, or an unlikely partner.
“The hostel was full, so he had to share a bed, and his bedfellow snored all night.”
bedfellow is a partner.
Bed plus fellow, in Middle English, when sharing a bed with a stranger at an inn was ordinary.
Middle English
bedfelawe
English, today
bedfellow
From Middle English bedfelawe, equivalent to bed + fellow. Sense 2 "associate, especially improbable" is influenced by strange bedfellow and its allusion to Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire