noun

• (Canada, US, Australia, Ireland) An item of furniture, often upholstered, for the comfortable seating of more than one person; a sofa.
  "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."
• (art, painting and gilding) A preliminary layer, as of colour or size.
  "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; […]"
• (brewing) A mass of steeped barley spread upon a floor to germinate, in malting; or the floor occupied by the barley.
  "a couch of malt"
• (metonymic, usually as "the couch") Psychotherapy.
  "He spent years on the couch going over his traumatic childhood."

verb

• (intransitive) To lie down; to recline (upon a couch or other place of repose).
  "Why did you ſo, doth not the Gentleman / Deſerue as full as fortunate a bed, / As euer Beatrice ſhall couch upon?"
• (intransitive) To bend the body, as in reverence, pain, labor, etc.; to stoop; to crouch.
  "At laſt, as thro an open Plain they yode, / They ſpy'd a Knight, that towards pricked fair, / And him beſide an aged Squire there rode, / That ſeem'd to couch under his Shield three-ſquare, / As if that Age bad him that Burden ſpare, / And yield it thoſe that ſtouter could it wield: […]"
• (transitive) To lay something upon a bed or other resting place.
  "But where vnbruſed youth with vnſtuft braine / Doth couch his lims, there, golden ſleepe doth raigne; […]"
• (transitive) To arrange or dispose as if in a bed.
  "[T]he Sea and the Land make one Globe, and the waters couch themſelves, as cloſe as may be, to the Center of this Globe in a Spherical convexity; ſo that if all the Mountains and Hills were ſcal'd, and the Earth made even, the Waters would not overflow its ſmooth ſurface; […]"