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bower

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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.
      • 1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 373:
        Rosa refused to return to the lair of the raper, but was induced to give Tudy what his mother described as ‘his last bit of happiness’ in a bower hastily got ready at Montrose, the La Plante mansion on Greenock Heights.
    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; […]
      • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 214:
        That night Tarzan built a snug little bower high among the swaying branches of a giant tree, and there the tired girl slept, while in a crotch beneath her the ape-man curled, ready, even in sleep, to protect her.
      • 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.
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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-West Germanic *būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz (“dweller”), from or related to *būaną (“to dwell”).

      Cognates

      Cognate with North Frisian Buur, böre, büür (“farmer”), Alemannic German pour, pur, Puur, pür (“farmer”), Dutch boer, bouwer (“farmer”), buur (“neighbour”), German and Luxembourgish Bauer (“farmer”), Low German Buer, Buur (“farmer”), Mòcheno pauer (“farmer”), Vilamovian pauer, pojer, poüer (“farmer”), Yiddish פּויער (poyer, “farmer”); also Albanian burr, burrë (“man; husband; brave male; lord”). 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 the card games euchre and five hundred (where the joker is omitted).
          • 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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