Noun

(en noun)

A friend, acquaintance, or partner; someone with whom one spends time or keeps company

His dog has been his trusted companion for the last five years.

* Shakespeare

Here are your sons again; and I must lose / Two of the sweetest companions in the world.

(dated) A person employed to accompany or travel with another.

(nautical) The framework on the quarterdeck of a sailing ship through which daylight entered the cabins below.

(nautical) The covering of a hatchway on an upper deck which leads to the companionway; the stairs themselves.

(topology) A knot in whose neighborhood another, specified knot meets every meridian disk.

(figuratively) A thing or phenomenon that is closely associated with another thing, phenomenon, or person.

(astronomy) A celestial object that is associated with another.

A knight of the lowest rank in certain orders.

a companion of the Bath

(obsolete, derogatory) A fellow; a rogue.

* 1599 , , III. i. 111:

and let us knog our / prains together to be revenge on this same scald, scurvy, / cogging companion ,

Noun

(en noun)

One with whom one shares a bed.

* 1599 Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew , .

''Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,

''Whither away, or where is thy abode?

''Happy the parents of so fair a child;

''Happier the man whom favourable stars

Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow .

An associate, often an otherwise improbable one.

* 1873' ''They say that "misfortune makes men acquainted with strange '''bedfellows ". The old hereditary Whig Cabinet ministers must, no doubt, by this time have learned to feel themselves at home with strange neighbours at their elbows.'' — Anthony Trollope, ''Phineas Redux , Chapter 40.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=February 12 , author=Les Roopanarine , title=Birmingham 1 - 0 Stoke , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=Statistics and truth can be uneasy bedfellows when it comes to football, but one fact could not be ignored: neither side has a player with more than seven goals to his name.}}