n. a coverlet for a bed, stitched or woven in squares.
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1908)
► uses
Uses:
He lowered his hand, but what it touched was not simply a counterpane— it was a counterpane with something underneath it like the outline of a human leg. Silas withdrew his arm and stood a moment petrified. “What, what,” he thought, “can this betoken?”
Robert Louis Stevenson. The Suicide Club
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Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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Tom said he was right behind Jim's bed now, and [...] nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the ground,
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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The evening was just cool enough to make it worth while to pull up the counterpane.