bedpan
Americannoun
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a shallow vessel placed under a bedridden patient to collect faeces and urine
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another name for warming pan
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bedpan
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Among the new finds are an anchor, glass bottles and a bedpan, according to a statement from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2024
She reserved her deepest attention for the orderlies who came in to change her bedpan and her sheets.
From Slate ● Jun. 4, 2023
Nursing notes show that Burrell was placed on a bedpan.
From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2022
But after one of my colleagues said it looked like a bedpan, I just couldn’t unsee the resemblance.
From The Verge ● May 28, 2022
She’s sleeping and I feel bad making her get up to bring me the bedpan.
From "Lucky Broken Girl" by Ruth Behar
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Even as the labor market has softened, healthcare jobs have stayed plentiful: People spend on healthcare in good times and bad, and thus far, the ability to change bedpans and insert IVs hasn’t been automated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2025
Ricky, 46, says he was routinely cursed and yelled at by an elderly client and has never been paid as much as minimum wage for changing bedpans and diapers, among other chores.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2023
Her Little Sisters of the Sick Poor are prime examples, as the name suggests: They spoon-feed the toothless, comfort the grieving, scrub floors, clean wounds, change diapers, empty bedpans.
From New York Times ● Sep. 12, 2021
Their colleague Norman Heatley rigged up a crazy-looking Heath Robinson system involving milk churns, baths, ceramic bedpans commissioned from a local pottery company, rubber tubes, drinks bottles and a doorbell.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2017
What did I care about the wretched bedpans!
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.