bower

• Etymologies 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /baʊ.əɹ/, /baʊəɹ/

  Rhymes: -aʊ.ə(ɹ), -aʊə(ɹ)

• Etymologies 4 and 6:

  (UK) IPA^(key): /bəʊ.əɹ/, /bəʊəɹ/

  Rhymes: -əʊə(ɹ)

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

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, in The Dust of Conflict‎:

     […] 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, […]

   • 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.

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

• boudoir

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

1. To embower; to enclose.
   • c. 1591–1595, Shakespeare, William, 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?

2. (obsolete) To lodge.
   • 1604 William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well AW III.v.34 "Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?"

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

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.

bower (plural bowers)

1. A peasant; a farmer.

From German Bauer.

bower (plural bowers)

1. Either of the two highest trumps in euchre.

• best bower
• left bower
• right bower

From the bow of a ship +‎ -er.

bower (plural bowers)

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

• best bower
• small bower

From bow (verb) +‎ -er.

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.
   • Spenser

     His rawbone arms, whose mighty brawned bowers / Were wont to rive steel plates and helmets hew.

From bow (noun) +‎ -er.

bower (plural bowers)

1. One who plays any of several bow instruments, such as the musical bow or diddley bow.

• diddley bower

From bough, compare brancher.

bower (plural bowers)

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