bed

   1. childbirth

   The bed is the symbol of birth, marriage, and copulation. To be brought to bed is standard English for the delivery of a child:

    At the height of the gale a soldier's wife was brought to bed. (Graves, 1940)

   2. to copulate with

   Formerly, where the marriage was made binding through consummation:

    Woo her, wed her and bed her. (Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew)

   In modern use, it applies to copulation by either sex, although men tend to bed women and women to bed with men:

    She had bedded with most of the criminal fraternity, including Roger Clinton, in a decade-long career of vertiginous debauchery. (Evans-Pritchard, 1997)

   Bedtime business is copulation:

    I don't care about your bedtime business. Let them bounce on you like a squashy mattress! (Rushdie, 1995)

   Bed-hopping is promiscuity:

    Given more privacy, some bed-hopping might have developed. (Hailey, 1979)