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bower

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: Bower

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

    From Middle English bour, from Old English būr, from Proto-West Germanic *būr, from Proto-Germanic *būrą (“room, abode”).

    Cognate with Saterland Frisian Búur (“storage room, utility room; cage”), German Bauer (“birdcage”), Old Norse búr (“cage”) (Danish bur, Norwegian Bokmål bur, Swedish bur).

    Noun

    bower (plural bowers)

    2. A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
      • c. 1572, George Gascoigne, A Lady being both wronged by false suspect, and also wounded by the durance of hir husband, doth thus bewray hir grief.:
        Give me my lute in bed now as I lie, / And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower.
      • 1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 373:
        Rosa refused to return to the lair of the raper, but was induced to give Tudy what his mother described as ‘his last bit of happiness’ in a bower hastily got ready at Montrose, the La Plante mansion on Greenock Heights.
    3. (literary) A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
      • 1748, William Shenstone, to William Lyttleton Esq.:
        While friends arrived in circles gay,
        To visit Damon's bower
      • 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 3, lines 1–5:
        A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness; but still will keep / A bower quiet for us, and a sleep / Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
    4. A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
      • 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
        […] say that thou overheard'st us,
        And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
        Where honey-suckles, ripen'd by the sun,
        Forbid the sun to enter; […]
      • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 214:
        That night Tarzan built a snug little bower high among the swaying branches of a giant tree, and there the tired girl slept, while in a crotch beneath her the ape-man curled, ready, even in sleep, to protect her.
      • 1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 30:
        The entire town mated together, in the leafy bowers that had sprung up among the washing-machines and television sets in the shopping mall, on the settees and divans by the furniture store, in the tropical paradises of the suburban gardens.
      • 2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 444:
        The branches met overhead in a kind of bower and the three cops stood in the shade and studied the roughcast gable of the cottage, maybe fifty yards on up the hill.
    5. (ornithology) A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.
    Alternative forms
    Synonyms
    Derived terms
    Translations

    Verb

    bower (third-person singular simple present bowers, present participle bowering, simple past and past participle bowered)

    2. To embower; to enclose.
      • c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act 3, scene 2, lines 80–82:
        O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell / When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend / In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
      • 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:
        […] belts of thin white mist streaked the brown plough land in the hollow where Appleby could see the pale shine of a winding river. Across that in turn, meadow and coppice rolled away past the white walls of a village bowered in orchards, […]
    3. (obsolete) To lodge.
    Derived terms

    Etymology 2

      From Middle English boueer, from Old English būr, ġebūr (“freeholder of the lowest class, peasant, farmer”) and Middle Dutch bouwer (“farmer, builder, peasant”); both from Proto-West Germanic *būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz (“dweller”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰōw- (“to dwell”).

      Cognate with German Bauer (“peasant, farmer”), Dutch boer, buur, and Albanian burrë (“man, husband”). Doublet of bauer, Boer, and boor. More at neighbour.

      Noun

      bower (plural bowers)

      2. A peasant; a farmer.

      Etymology 3

        From German Bauer. A doublet of etymology 2 and of the German-origin surname Bauer.

        Noun

        bower (plural bowers)

        2. Either of the two highest trumps in the card games euchre and five hundred (where the joker is omitted).
          • 1870, Bret Harte, Plain Language from Truthful James:
            Yet the cards they were stocked / In a way that I grieve, / And my feelings were shocked / At the state of Nye's sleeve, / Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, / And the same with intent to deceive.
        Derived terms

        Etymology 4

          From the bow of a ship +‎ -er.

          Noun

          bower (plural bowers)

          2. (nautical) A type of ship's anchor, carried at the bow.
          Derived terms

          Etymology 5

            From bow (verb) +‎ -er.

            Noun

            bower (plural bowers)

            1. One who bows or bends.
              • 1977, Desmond Morris, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior, page 144:
                The bower aims his display straight at the dominant figure, who may reciprocate with a milder version of the same action.
            2. A muscle that bends a limb, especially the arm.

            Etymology 6

              From bow (noun) +‎ -er.

              Noun

              bower (plural bowers)

              2. One who plays any of several bow instruments, such as the musical bow or diddley bow.
              Derived terms

              Etymology 7

                From bough +‎ -er, compare brancher.

                Alternative forms

                Noun

                bower (plural bowers)

                2. (falconry) A young hawk, when it begins to leave the nest.

                See also

                References

                “bower”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

                Anagrams

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