"featherbed" in the noun sense
1. feather bed, featherbed
a mattress stuffed with feathers
"featherbed" in the verb sense
1. pamper, featherbed, cosset, cocker, baby, coddle, mollycoddle, spoil, indulge
treat with excessive indulgence
"grandparents often pamper the children"
"Let's not mollycoddle our students!"
2. featherbed
hire more workers than are necessary
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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