couch

• At a casting workshop, an actor was performing a blank scene […] and he had not bothered to make any choices about why he was on stage, what his motivation was, what he was playing. He had decided who he was and where he was (on a couch with his girlfriend) but had not decided what he wanted. So the performance was flat and lifeless.2009, Nancy Bishop, Secrets from the Casting Couch: On Camera Strategies for Actors from a Casting Director, London: Methuen Drama, A & C Black, →ISBN:
• […] I want to try to describe my efforts to take psychoanalysis as a method off the couch and into the work of creating and using a political conference table.2010, Alessandra Lemma, Matthew Patrick, “Off the Couch and Round the Conference Table”, in Alessandra Lemma, Matthew Patrick, editors, Off the Couch: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Applications, London: Routledge, →ISBN:

• O Sleepe, O gentle Sleepe, […] O thou dull God, why lyeſt thou with the vilde, / In loathſome Beds, and leau'st the Kingly Couch, / A Watch-caſe, or a common Larum-Bell?1596–1599, William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, Containing his Death: and the Coronation of King Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, act II, scene i, page 85:
• [A]pproach thy grave / Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.c. 1811 or 1816, William Cullen Bryant, “The Fragment [later renamed Thanatopsis]”, in North American Review, Boston, Mass.: O. Everett, published September 1817, →OCLC:

• A couch was located under the roots of an uprooted tree in a medium dense spruce patch and the second couch was located under a free standing spruce along a regulation channel.1998, Kevin Roche, First Phase Report of the Třeboň Otter Project:

Painting and gilding

• For the re-lining, the usual method is to strain a new and strong cloth of an even surface upon the stretcher, to rub it down smooth with pumice stone, and then to give it an even couch of paste, a similar couch is then to be applied to the back of the picture after it has been freed from all inequalities; […]1839, Jean-François-Léonor Mérimée, W[illiam] B[enjamin] Sarsfield Taylor, “On the Preservation of Pictures, and the Methods Used for Restoring Them”, in The Art of Painting in Oil, and in Fresco: Being a History of the Various Processes and Materials Employed, from Its Discovery, by Hubert and John Van Eyck, to the Present Time: Translated from the Original French Treatise of M. J. F. L. Mérimée, Secretary to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Paris. With Original Observations on the Rise and Progress of British Art, the French and English Chromatic Scales, and Theories of Colouring, by W. B. Sarsfield Taylor, Senior Curator of the Living Model Academy, &c. &c., London: Whittaker & Co. Ave Maria Lane, →OCLC, page 231:
• Once you have chosen which color of underpainting you will use, you should apply the paint to get the values, lighting, and the likeness perfect. The underpainting is applied using a couch of medium and the paint is worked into that medium in very small amounts and in small areas at a time. […] Your paint should glide and then melt into the couch as you work the paint with your brush.2008, Jodi Brody, Portrait Painting with Classical Old Masters Techniques: A Guide to Using the Venetian Methods, [Raleigh, N.C.]: Lulu, →ISBN, page 58:

• a couch of malt
• MALTING IN MUNICH. The barley is steeped till the acrospire, in embryo, or seed germ, seems to be quickened; […] As long however as the seed-gum sticks to the husk, it has not been steeped enough for exposure to the underground malt-floor: nor can deficient steeping be safely made up for afterwards by sprinkling the malt couch with a watering can, which is apt to render the malting irregular. […] It [the barley] is now taken out and laid on the couch floor, in a square heap, eight to ten inches high, and it is turned over morning and evening with dexterity, so as to throw the middle portion upon the top and bottom of the new made couch.1849, William Ford, “Malting”, in An Historical Account of the Malt Trade and Laws, Shewing the Decline, and Causes of the Decline in the Consumption of Malt; with a Practical Treatise on Malting and Brewing, Deduced from Thirty Years Experience, London: Published by the author, 10, West Square, St. George's, Southwark, and 5, Talbot Court, Gracechurch Street, →OCLC, pages 125–126:

• He spent years on the couch going over his traumatic childhood.

• If Kamala Harris replaces Joe Biden in the 2024 election, analysts warn that she will lose to the couch.