Why this word is great
COUCHEE — [Noun] A formal evening reception held by a monarch or noble at the hour of retiring for the night. From French couchée, feminine past participle of coucher ("to lay down, to put to bed"), from Old French colchier, from Latin collocāre ("to place, arrange"). Unlike the "levee," which commences the public day with the ceremony of rising, or the "soirée," which is a mere evening's diversion, the couchee is an audience granted at the threshold of privacy—a ritual of institutionalized intimacy and deliberate closure. It is the scent of wax cooling on guttered candlesticks, the stifled ache of a courtier's smile held too long, and the rustle of a silken bed-curtain glimpsed through an antechamber door—a poignant theater where power, like consciousness, has no true intermission, and even majesty must, at last, submit to the common dark.