bovver
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Southern England/ˈbɒvə/
bovver noun: violence, especially that associated with youth gangs. Also the pronunciation spelling of bother.
Noun
bovver (countable and uncountable, plural bovvers)
- Violence, especially that associated with youth gangs.
- In London there are some thirty gangs of “bovver birds,” violence-prone girls who roam the streets in packs attacking almost any vulnerable object for no apparent reason other than the sheer thrill of it.1976, Freda Adler, Herbert Marcus Adler, Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal, page 100
Also used as
bovver is also the pronunciation spelling of bother.
Forms of bovver
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bovvers |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bovvers |
| present participle | bovvering |
| past participle | bovvered |
| past | bovvered |
Origin of bovver
Represents a nonstandard or dialectal (in particular Cockney) pronunciation of bother.
Words formed from bovver
Phrases with bovver
Words that rhyme with bovver
Questions about bovver
- What does bovver mean?
- Bovver means violence, especially that associated with youth gangs.
- What part of speech is bovver?
- Bovver is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bovver?
- Bovver is pronounced /ˈbɒvə/ (Southern England).
- What is the plural of bovver?
- The plural of bovver is bovvers.
Words near bovver in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bovver (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bovver.wav.
Cite this entry: “bovver.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bovver. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.