bed check
- noun
- /bɛd tʃɛk/
- At the end of the evening, a bed check was performed to make sure no one was missing from the dormitory.
- bed check every night
Examples
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Gotta get back before bed check.
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And then I'm gonna come and get you after bed check.
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They'll be doing a bed check soon.
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The tasks requiring the most time per shift are feeding, bed check, and showers.
Academic text (1994) -
WOMAN: Bed check, ladies!
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The counselor will conduct a bed check at 10 PM to ensure all the campers are in their assigned beds.
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After lights out, the staff carried out a bed check to confirm that everyone was present and accounted for.
How Thorough
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning ‘an inspection to ensure people are in bed’ is directly derivable from combining 'bed' (place for sleeping) with 'check' (an inspection), so the relation between constituents and whole is straightforward. This is a common noun-compound pattern in English (and paralleled in many other languages), so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Bed check comes from the image of someone walking through a dorm or camp at night, looking into every bed to check who is there. So, a bed check means a 'check' to make sure everyone is in bed.