Wiktionary

bower

See also: Bower

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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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

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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.
  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; […]
    • 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
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Synonyms
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Derived terms
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Translations
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Verb

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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
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Etymology 2

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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-Germanic *būraz (“dweller”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰōw- (“to dwell”). Cognate with German Bauer (“peasant, builder”), Dutch boer, buur, and Albanian burrë (“man, husband”). Doublet of bauer, Boer, and boor. More at neighbour.

Noun

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bower (plural bowers)

  2. A peasant; a farmer.

Etymology 3

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

Noun

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bower (plural bowers)

  2. Either of the two highest trumps in euchre.
    • 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.
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Etymology 4

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From the bow of a ship +‎ -er.

Noun

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bower (plural bowers)

  2. (nautical) A type of ship's anchor, carried at the bow.
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Etymology 5

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From bow (verb) +‎ -er.

Noun

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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

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From bow (noun) +‎ -er.

Noun

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bower (plural bowers)

  2. One who plays any of several bow instruments, such as the musical bow or diddley bow.
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Etymology 7

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From bough +‎ -er, compare brancher.

Alternative forms

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Noun

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bower (plural bowers)

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

See also

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References

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

Anagrams

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