Cot or crib? (Re: Harry at the Dursleys)

[ginnysthe1]

No: HPFGUIDX 118503


Carol earlier:
So a cot *is* what Americans call a crib (a child's bed with slide 
down railings). The portable baby bed would be a bassinette, or at 
least that's what it was called when I had occasion to think about 
the matter. <snip>

Wisteria53 (UK with 3 children):
Cots v cribs ... I never used the word crib - the portable one you're 
describing sounds like a carrycot or a Moses basket.

Carol again:
Anyone here familiar with nineteenth-century English poetry? Here's 
the beginning of Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp," where "cot" 
equals "cottage":

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown
With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd Myrtle . . . .

Picture Coleridge and his bride sitting beside a baby bed "o'ergrown"
with flowers, and baby Harry lying or standing in his little cottage.
Oh, the English language!
[signed] Carol, who thinks "Moses basket" is a fine term for a 
bassinette, especially as it's readily intelligible to anyone with a 
smattering of biblical knowledge

Childless Kim chimes in:
I found the definition online.  Bassinet (or bassinette?): An oblong 
basketlike bed for an infant.  And here I thought a bassinnette was a 
baby bathtub.

Kim (expecting this post to be expunged by elves on account of its 
getting too off-topic, whereas Coleridge's poem was at least on-topic 
since it used the word Pensieve and referred to Moaning Myrtle... ;-))