bower

English

Pronunciation

• 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)

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: 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     […] 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

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, 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, […]

3. (obsolete) To lodge.
   • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “Marche. Aegloga Tertius.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: , London: Hugh Singleton, , →OCLC; reprinted as H Oskar Sommer, editor, The Shepheardes Calender , London: John C. Nimmo, , 1890, →OCLC:

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

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, compare brancher.

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

2. (obsolete, 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