bower
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biology
natural-sciences
ornithology
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).
Inflected forms:
form: bowers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: bowre
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: bowers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: bowering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: bowered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: bowered
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
pos: noun
examples: Give me my lute in bed now as I lie, / And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower.
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.
gloss: A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
pos: noun
tags: literary
examples: While friends arrived in circles gay,
To visit Damon's bower
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.
gloss: A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
pos: noun
examples: […]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;[…]
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.
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.
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.
gloss: A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.
pos: noun
gloss: To embower; to enclose.
pos: verb
examples: 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?
[…]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,[…]
gloss: To lodge.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
examples: Flora now calleth forth each flower,
And bids make readie Maias bower
Synonyms: boudoir
Derived words: Bower Ashton
bowerland
bowerless
bowerlet
Bowers Gifford
bower vine
bowerwoman
bowery
bridal bower
lady's bower
virgin's bower
imbower
overbowering
Translations: