bower

See also Bower

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /baʊəɹ/, X-SAMPA: /baU@r/

  Rhymes: -aʊər

Etymology 1

From Old English būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz. Cognate with German Bauer (“birdcage”), Old Norse búr (Danish bur, Swedish bur (“cage”)).

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

1. A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
   • Gascoigne

     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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shenstone to this entry?)

3. A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3 Scene 1

     […] 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; […]

   • 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, The Dust of Conflict^[1]:

     […] 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, […]

4. (ornithology) A large structure made of grass and bright objects, used by the bower bird during courtship displays.

Synonyms

• boudoir

Translations

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

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 閨房 (cmn), 闺房 (cmn) (guīfáng)

• French: boudoir (fr) m
• German: Boudoir (de) n
• Greek: μπουντουάρ (el) (buduár) n

• Hungarian: budoár (hu)
• Interlingue: buduore (ie)
• Polish: buduar (pl) m
• Russian: будуар (ru) (buduár) m
• Spanish: tocador (es) m

Verb

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

1. To embower; to enclose.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

2. (obsolete) To lodge.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

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”). See boor, neighbor.

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

1. A peasant; a farmer.

Etymology 3

From German Bauer.

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

1. Either of the two highest trumps in euchre.

Derived terms

• best bower
• left bower
• right bower

Etymology 4

From the bow of a ship

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

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

Etymology 5

From bough, compare brancher.

Noun

bower (plural bowers)

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

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.