Bed of Roses

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Meaning:

Bed of Roses means a pleasant or easy situation.

Origin:

A bed of roses was first used in the late 1500s and talked about real flowers. A bed made of flower petals. The first written record was found in Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd To His Love, in 1599 it reads:

“…And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle…”

The phrase has since come to be used figuratively to refer to any easy and pleasant situation.

This phrase really took off again in modern culture in 1999 when the American Movie “American Beauty” used the image of a bed of roses in a literal sense, showing a beautiful girl in a bed of roses. Since then, the term bed of roses can be seen all around, from bath kits to the naming of sheets.

Example:

Today we still use the phrase Bed of Roses but not to express a pleasant and easy situation, but the opposite, to state that life has not been easy or pleasant - an example sentence is:

It's a pretty easy job, but it's no bed of roses, with such long hours.

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