# bower
## English
### Pronunciation

* Etymologies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7:
    (UK) IPA: /baʊ.əɹ/, /baʊəɹ/
    Audio (Southern England):(file)
    Rhymes: -aʊ.ə(ɹ), -aʊə(ɹ)
* Etymology 6:
    (UK) IPA: /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)
* 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.
* (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.
* 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.
* (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
#### Verb

bower (third-person singular simple present bowers, present participle bowering, simple past and past participle bowered)
* 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, […]
* (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, farmer”), Dutch boer, buur, and Albanian burrë (“man, husband”). Doublet of bauer, Boer, and boor. More at neighbour.

#### Noun

bower (plural bowers)
* 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)
* 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)
* (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)
* 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.
* 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)
* 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)
* (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