Plural of bedstave; the individual wooden slats or strips that form the support for a mattress in traditional bed frames.
From bed + stave (from Old English 'stafa'). 'Stave' refers to thin wooden strips, like those in barrels. This term is archaic and comes from woodworking vocabulary for bed construction.
Counting bedstaves was actually how medieval people assessed furniture quality—more staves meant better support and less sagging, so a bed's stave count was like today's mattress ratings.
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