bow

Noun (1)

bow (plural bows)

1. A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.
   • Holonym: bow and arrow
   • Bows come in a variety of different shapes, sizes and cultures, and what is true of one, is not necessarily true of another, so we're gonna be stereotyping here, but, in general, a bow is a way of launching a pointy stick at somebody that you don't like.2024 November 28, blumineck, “Fantasy vs Reality: 5 weapons that fantasy gets wrong!”, in youtube.com, retrieved 07 May 2025
2. A curved bend in a rod or planar surface, or in a linear formation such as a river (see oxbow).
3. A rod with horsehair (or an artificial substitute) stretched between the ends, used for playing various stringed musical instruments.
4. A stringed instrument (chordophone), consisting of a stick with a single taut cord stretched between the ends, most often played by plucking.

   Synonyms:

   fiddlestick, musical bow

5. A type of knot with two loops, used to tie together two cords such as shoelaces or apron strings, and frequently used as decoration, such as in gift-wrapping.
6. Anything bent or curved, such as a rainbow.
   • I do set my bow in the cloud.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 9:13
7. The U-shaped piece which goes around the neck of an ox and fastens it to the yoke.

   Synonyms:

   arc, bend, curve

8. Either of the arms of a pair of spectacles, running from the side of the lens to behind the wearer's ear.
   • […] she kept toying with a pair of old sunglasses which lay beside her on the kitchen table. One of the bows had been mended with adhesive tape, and one of the lenses was cracked.1991, Stephen King, Needful Things
9. Any instrument consisting of an elastic rod, with ends connected by a string, employed for giving reciprocating motion to a drill, or for preparing and arranging hair, fur, etc., used by hatters.
10. A crude sort of quadrant formerly used for taking the sun's altitude at sea.
11. Two pieces of wood which form the arched forward part of a saddle tree.
12. The part of a key that is not inserted into the lock and that is used to turn the key.
13. Either of the two handles of a pair of scissors.

Verb (1)

bow (third-person singular simple present bows, present participle bowing, simple past and past participle bowed)

1. To play music on (a stringed) instrument using a bow.
   • The musician bowed his violin expertly.
2. (ergative) To bend or curve, particularly downward.
   • The shelf bowed under the weight of the books.
   • How long wil ye imagine mischiefe against a man? ye shall be slaine all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 62:3
3. (figuratively, transitive) To exercise powerful or controlling influence over; to bend or incline, figuratively; to humble or subdue.
   • Adversities do more bow men's minds to religion.1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Atheism”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC
   • not to bow and bias their opinions1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)

Verb (2)

IPA/baʊ/

bow (third-person singular simple present bows, present participle bowing, simple past and past participle bowed)

1. (intransitive) To bend oneself as a gesture of respect or deference.
   • The soldier now blew upon a green whistle, and at once a young girl, dressed in a pretty green silk gown, entered the room. She had lovely green hair and green eyes, and she bowed low before Dorothy as she said, "Follow me and I will show you your room."1900 May 17, L[yman] Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] M[elvin] Hill Co., →OCLC
   • I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
2. (intransitive, transitive) To debut.
   • The show bowed in the first week of December, 1951. Dinah was ready, and so were the technicians who put on her makeup […]1979, Bruce Cassiday, Dinah!: A Biography, page 115
   • SCP recently announced that How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical will bow on the newly renovated stage next December.2010 (publication date), Kara Krekeler, "Rebuilding the opera house", West End Word, volume 39, number 26, December 22, 2010 – January 11, 2011, page 1
3. (intransitive) To defer (to something).
   • I bow to your better judgement in the matter.
4. (transitive) To give a direction, indication, or command to by bowing.
   • “This way, monsieur,” he said, and led the way up the broad, marble staircase. In another moment he had opened a door, and, drawing aside a heavy curtain, obsequiously bowed Tarzan into a dimly lighted apartment. Then Jacques vanished.1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Plot That Failed”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published March 1915, →OCLC, page 63
   • Poirot rose gallantly, bowed her into the seat opposite him.1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 7, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 124
5. (intransitive) To give up or cease resisting.
   • I'll never bow to that tyrant.

Noun (2)

IPA/baʊ/

bow (plural bows)

1. A gesture, usually showing respect, made by inclining the head or bending forward at the waist; a reverence
   • He made a polite bow as he entered the room.

Noun (3)

IPA/baʊ/

bow (plural bows)

1. The front of a boat or ship.
   • Holonyms: watercraft < vessel
   • Meronyms: beak, beak, beakhead

   Synonyms:

   stem, forestem, fore, prow, prore

   Antonyms:

   stern, aft, poop

2. The rower that sits in the seat closest to the bow of the boat.

Verb (3)

IPA/baʊ/

bow

1. (auxiliary) about to

Proper noun capitalized: Bow

IPA/bəʊ/

Bow (countable and uncountable, plural Bows)

1. A surname.
2. A suburb of eastern London in the borough of Tower Hamlets, Greater London, England (OS grid ref TQ3782).
3. A village and civil parish in Mid Devon district, Devon, England (OS grid ref SS7201).
4. A hamlet in Ashprington parish, South Hams district, Devon (OS grid ref SX8156).
5. A hamlet in Stanford in the Vale parish, Vale of White Horse district, Oxfordshire, England (OS grid ref SU3494).
6. An unincorporated community in Cumberland County, Kentucky.
7. A town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire.
8. An unincorporated commmunity in Skagit County, Washington.
9. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Bow Creek
10. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Bow Street

Noun (4) capitalized: BOW

BOW (plural BOWs)

1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of bag of words.
   • However, despite these shortcomings, due to its simplicity and ease of implementation, BoW is a commonly used text representation scheme, especially for text classification among other NLP problems.2020, Sowmya Vajjala, Bodhisattwa Majumder, Anuj Gupta, Harshit Surana, Practical Natural Language Processing […] , First edition, Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo: O'Reilly, →ISBN

Noun (5) capitalized: BoW

BoW (plural BoWs)

1. Alternative letter-case form of BOW.