bower

See also: Bower

English

Pronunciation

• Etymologies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /baʊ.əɹ/, /baʊəɹ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  Rhymes: -aʊ.ə(ɹ), -aʊə(ɹ)

• Etymology 6:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /bəʊ.əɹ/, /bəʊəɹ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  Rhymes: -əʊə(ɹ)

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.

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

• bowre (obsolete)

Synonyms

• boudoir

Derived terms

• Bower Ashton
• bowerland
• bowerless
• bowerlet
• Bowers Gifford
• bower vine
• bowerwoman
• bowery
• lady's bower
• virgin's bower

 

Translations

a woman's bedroom or private apartments, especially in a medieval castle

• Bulgarian: будоар m (budoar)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 閨房 / 闺房 (zh) (guīfáng)

• Esperanto: buduaro
• Finnish: buduaari (fi), budoaari (fi)
• French: boudoir (fr) m
• German: Boudoir (de) n, Frauengemach (de) n, Kemenate (de) f
• Greek: μπουντουάρ (el) n (bountouár)
• Hungarian: budoár (hu)
• Macedonian: будоа́р m (budoár)
• Middle English: bour
• Polish: buduar (pl) m, alkierz (pl) m
• Russian: будуа́р (ru) m (buduár)
• Spanish: tocador m
• Swedish: budoar (sv)
• Ukrainian: будуа́р (uk) (buduár)
• Yiddish: בודואַר (buduar)

(literary) A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage

• German: Sommerhaus (de) n, Landhaus (de) n, Landhäuschen n
• Hungarian: lak (hu)
• Middle English: bour

a leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods

• Bulgarian: беседка (bg) f (besedka)
• Czech: loubí (cs) n, besídka f, altánek m
• Esperanto: laŭbo
• German: Gartenlaube (de) f (in a garden), Laube (de) f, schattiges Plätzchen n
• Greek: κληματαριά (el) f (klimatariá), αναδενδράδα f (anadendráda)
• Irish: lúibín coille m
• Kurdish:

  Central Kurdish: کەپر (kepir)

• Latin: trichila f, triclea f
• Macedonian: се́ница f (sénica)
• Turkish: kameriye (tr)
• Ukrainian: альта́нка (uk) (alʹtánka), курі́нь (uk) (kurínʹ)
• Welsh: deildy m

(ornithology) A large structure made of grass and bright objects

• German: Laube (de) f

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.
   • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “March. Ægloga Tertia.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC:

     Flora now calleth forth each flower,
     And bids make readie Maias bower

Derived terms

• imbower
• overbowering

 

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-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

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 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.

Derived terms

• best bower
• left bower
• right bower

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

• best bower
• bower anchor
• small bower

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.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     His rawbone armes, whose mighty brawned bowrs / Were wont to riue steele plates, and helmets hew

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

• diddley bower

Etymology 7

From bough +‎ -er, compare brancher.

Alternative forms

• bougher

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

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

See also

• Bower Ashton

References

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

Anagrams

• bowre