bower

• Etymologies 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /baʊ.əɹ/, /baʊəɹ/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  Rhymes: -aʊ.ə(ɹ), -aʊə(ɹ)

• Etymologies 5 and 6:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /bəʊ.əɹ/, /bəʊəɹ/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  Rhymes: -əʊə(ɹ)

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).

bower (plural bowers)

1. 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.

2. (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. 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.

3. 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.

4. (ornithology) A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.

• bowre (obsolete)

• boudoir

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

1. 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, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict‎:

     […] 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, […]

2. (obsolete) To lodge.
   • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “March. Ægloga Tertia.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC; reprinted as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, The Shepheardes Calender […], London: John C. Nimmo, […], 1890, →OCLC:

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

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.

bower (plural bowers)

1. A peasant; a farmer.

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

bower (plural bowers)

1. 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.

• best bower
• left bower
• right bower

From the bow of a ship +‎ -er.

bower (plural bowers)

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

• best bower
• bower anchor
• small bower

From bow (verb) +‎ -er.

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

From bow (noun) +‎ -er.

bower (plural bowers)

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

• diddley bower

From bough, compare brancher.

bower (plural bowers)

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

• Bower Ashton

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

• bowre