Example sentences
qǐ起zhè这me么zǎo早。
Up so early.
tā他qǐ起chuáng床wǎn晚le了。
He got up late.
About this word
起 is "to rise" and 床 is "bed", so 起床 is "to rise from bed". It is a verb-object compound and splits: 起了床, 起得很早, 他六点就起床了. It belongs to a daily sequence that Chinese phrases as a set: 起床, 上班, 下班, 睡觉. Do not confuse it with 起来, which is a direction word meaning "up" and also "to get up" in general: 站起来, 拿起来.
The story behind the character
起
起 is 走, a person moving, with 己 for the sound. Xu Shen wrote 起, 能立也: the ability to stand up, before any walking happens. From standing up it spread to starting, rising, getting out of bed. 起床 is rise from bed, and 一起 uses the same character for doing something alongside someone.
床
床 is 广, a roof leaning against a hillside, with 木 (wood) underneath. The older form was 牀, which has 爿 on the left, a drawing of a bed frame standing on end. Xu Shen defined 牀 as the thing you sit on to settle your body. So it was never just furniture. It was the thing that let you lie down and stop.