bed [OE] The core idea of this Old English word may be ‘digging’, as both the garden bed and the sleeping bed existed in Old English and other Germanic words. Medieval uses of to make a bed refer to the preparation of a sleeping place on the floor of an open hall, one which would not have existed until ‘made’. The term bed and breakfast first appeared in the late 19th century, but bed and board (board meaning the table at which meals are taken, hence food) is early 13th century. In the 1970s the phrase began to describe the financial practice of bed-and-breakfasting, in which dealers sell shares late in the day and buy them back early the next morning to gain a tax advantage.