bowe

bowe is the obsolete spelling of bow.

Meaning of bow

bow (plural bows)

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
A curved bend in a rod or planar surface, or in a linear formation such as a river (see oxbow).
A rod with horsehair (or an artificial substitute) stretched between the ends, used for playing various stringed musical instruments.
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
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.
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

Bowe (plural Bowes)

A surname.
- As for daytime sun protection, Dr. Bowe said mineral sunscreens made with zinc oxide may be gentler on sensitized skin than chemical formulas.2023 December 6, Jessica DeFino, “Too Many Products Can Stress Out Your Skin. Here’s How to Scale Back.”, in The New York Times

Noun
plural	bowes
Verb
third-person singular present	bowes
present participle	bowing
past participle	bowed
past	bowed
Proper noun
plural	Bowes

What does bowe mean?: Bowe means a surname.
What is bowe the obsolete spelling of?: Bowe is the obsolete spelling of bow.
What part of speech is bowe?: Bowe is a proper noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowe (page history and authors); Bowe (page history and authors); bow (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “bowe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.