Futon
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A thin mattress of tufted cotton or similar material, placed on a floor or on a raised, foldable frame as a bed.
"The Japanese bed is the floor, with a wooden box under the neck for a pillow and a futon for a covering. To the foreigner the Japanese landlord allows five or six futons, or cotton-wadded comforters, and they make a tolerable mattress, although not springy, and rather apt to be damp and musty."
- 2 Abbreviation of full text on the Net: the presence of the complete text of an academic paper on the Internet, seen as a potential biasing factor in which papers get cited most often. abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
- 3 mattress consisting of a pad of cotton batting that is used for sleeping on the floor or on a raised frame wordnet
- 4 A round cushion used for Zen meditation, traditionally made of woven bulrush leaves.
- 5 A specific kind of sofa-bed, with a fixed cushion that forms a mattress when folded down and a sofa when folded up.
"I was 18 years old, sleeping on a futon, cooking on a George Foreman grill and showering at a friend's house every few days."
Example
More examples"In the morning, we clear the futon."
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 布団 (futon), in turn from Middle Chinese 蒲團 (MC bu dwan, “meditation cushion”) (compare Mandarin 蒲团 (pútuán)), from 蒲 (bu, “bulrush, cattail”) + 團 (dwan, “sphere, round object”) from the way the original cushion was round and made from woven bulrushes.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.