Is there a word or an idiom for lying on the bed peacefully and happy? Throwing yourself down on bed arms wide open, all your muscles relaxed and staring at the ceiling with a happy smile like something you dreamed of has just happened. Is there an idiom to narrow this situation?
Learn English – word for lying on the bed peacefully, all your muscles relaxed
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Best Answer
There are a few terms which specifically capture the physical state of lying on the ground, face up, but they're fairly clinical and lack the mental overtones you describe (of complete relaxation, etc).
Nevertheless:
Which I like because its spelling reminds me of "supple" (relaxed, like a loose, floppy noodle). And there's also:
Which I like because it has hints of "recline" and "slumber".
Now, there are a couple of other words which are often used to mean lying on one's back, but in a strict technical sense, they actually mean lying face down:
As a verb, prostrate¹ often carries an active connotation of laying face down in reverence or submission.
A more passive synonym, often used of the unconscious (e.g. boxers who have been knocked out) and corpses is:
This is the difference:
image credit: paramedicine.com
You'll notice that none of these words explicitly describe one's arms and legs being outstretched. Now, if you truly need to capture that physical arrangement, you can use:
But I strongly recommend you avoid that term.
If the actual physical arrangement of your body is less important than the mental state of relaxation you're trying to convey, then you can use my personal favorite word from this particular constellation²:
But again, that lacks the explicit physical state of laying flat on the floor.
So, if you need to capture both the physical and mental states, you can say something like "I was relaxing on the floor", or "I was just floating there" (metaphorically invoking the image of floating on water), or, heck, "I was so relaxed, I just gave myself up to gravity".
¹ Don't confuse prostrate and prostate (with only one
r
), please.² Why do I like this particular word? Because I once read a wonderful short story about a living car, and one line the admiring narrator used to describe it was something like "*That car didn't park, it reposed.". Sadly, that's all I can remember of the story; its title is lost to me forever.