bower
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: -aʊ.ə(ɹ)
-aʊə(ɹ)
-əʊə(ɹ)
Forms: form: bowers
form: bowre
Etymology: 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).
Senses: examples: text: Give me my lute in bed now as I lie, / And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower.
ref: 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.:
text: 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.
ref: 1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 373:
glosses: A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
examples: text: While friends arrived in circles gay,
To visit Damon's bower
ref: 1748, William Shenstone, to William Lyttleton Esq.:
text: 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.
ref: 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 3, lines 1–5:
glosses: A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
examples: text: […]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;[…]
ref: 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]:
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 214:
text: 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.
ref: 1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 30:
text: 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.
ref: 2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 444:
glosses: A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
ornithology
glosses: A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.
Synonyms: boudoir
Derived terms: Bower Ashton
bowerland
bowerless
bowerlet
Bowers Gifford
bower vine
bowerwoman
bowery
bridal bower
lady's bower
virgin's bower