Word.ws English Dictionary

bower

/ˈbaʊə(ɹ)/

bower noun: a bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.

Noun (1)

bower (plural bowers)

  1. A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
    • Give me my lute in bed now as I lie, / And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower.c. 1572, George Gascoigne, A Lady being both wronged by false suspect, and also wounded by the durance of hir husband, doth thus bewray hir grief.
    • 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.1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 373
  2. (literary) A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
    • While friends arrived in circles gay,
      To visit Damon's bower1748, William Shenstone, to William Lyttleton Esq.
    • 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.1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 3, lines 1–5
  3. A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
    • […]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;[…]1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • 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.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 214
  4. A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.

Verb

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

  1. To embower; to enclose.
    • 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?c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act 3, scene 2, lines 80–82
    • […]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,[…]1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC
  2. (obsolete) To lodge.
    • Flora now calleth forth each flower,
      And bids make readie Maias bower1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “March. Ægloga Tertia.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC

Noun (2)

bower (plural bowers)

  1. A peasant; a farmer.

Noun (3)

bower (plural bowers)

  1. Either of the two highest trumps in the card games euchre and five hundred (where the joker is omitted).
    • Yet the cards they were stocked / In a way that I grieve, / And my feelings were shocked / At the state of Nye's sleeve, / Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, / And the same with intent to deceive.1870, Bret Harte, Plain Language from Truthful James

Noun (4)

bower (plural bowers)

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

Noun (5)

bower (plural bowers)

  1. One who bows or bends.
    • The bower aims his display straight at the dominant figure, who may reciprocate with a milder version of the same action.1977, Desmond Morris, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior, page 144
  2. A muscle that bends a limb, especially the arm.
    • His rawbone armes, whose mighty brawned bowrs / Were wont to riue steele plates, and helmets hew1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Noun (6)

bower (plural bowers)

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

Noun (7)

bower (plural bowers)

  1. A young hawk, when it begins to leave the nest.

Proper noun capitalized: Bower

Bower

  1. A surname.
    • Snowdon climbed to the top floor of the house opposite George's in Pimlico to observe the artist in one window and his model, the painter Natalie Bower, in the adjacent.2007, Antony Armstrong-Jones Snowdon (Earl of), Robin Muir, Pallant House Gallery, In Camera: Snowdon (page 86)

bower meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

bower in Hindi

a leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods
निकुंज nikuñj

bower in Tamil

bower, arbor
பந்தர் pantar

bower in Marathi

बोवर, बाॅवर

bower in Urdu

بوور
More languagesFewer languages
bower in Telugu
పొదరిల్లు podarillu, నికుంజము nikuñjamu, మండపము maṇḍapamu
bower in Malayalam
വള്ളിക്കുടിൽ, വള്ളിപ്പടപ്പ്, വള്ളിക്കെട്ട്, കുടിൽ
bower in Kannada
ಬೋವರ್
bower in Punjabi
ਬੋਵਰ
bower in Gujarati
બોવર
bower in Sanskrit
गृह gṛhá
bower in Nepali
बोवर, बोवर गर्न, बोवर गर्नको लागि

Examples of bower in a sentence

  • Bower, how can I get an EKG with him strapped down?”
  • "Dreary to explain and word all that gnashy science into flowery bower chat," said Emul.
  • When the so-called honeymoon was over, the bridal bower became Rosa's home.

All 13 example sentences with bower

Synonyms of bower

Forms of bower

Noun
pluralbowers
alternative formbougher
alternative form (obsolete)bowre
Verb
third-person singular presentbowers
present participlebowering
past participlebowered
pastbowered

Plural of bower: bowers

Origin of bower

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).

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-West Germanic *būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz (“dweller”), from or related to *būaną (“to dwell”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian Buur, böre, büür (“farmer”), Alemannic German pour, pur, Puur, pür (“farmer”), Dutch boer, bouwer (“farmer”), buur (“neighbour”), German and Luxembourgish Bauer (“farmer”), Low German Buer, Buur (“farmer”), Mòcheno pauer (“farmer”), Vilamovian pauer, pojer, poüer (“farmer”), Yiddish פּויער (poyer, “farmer”); also Albanian burr, burrë (“man; husband; brave male; lord”). Doublet of bauer, Boer, and boor. More at neighbour.

From German Bauer. A doublet of etymology 2 and of the German-origin surname Bauer.

Words formed from bower

Phrases with bower

Words that rhyme with bower

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bower

What does bower mean?
Bower means a bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
What is bower in Hindi?
Bower in Hindi is निकुंज (nikuñj). See Bower meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is bower?
Bower can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bower?
Bower is pronounced /ˈbaʊə(ɹ)/.
What is the plural of bower?
The plural of bower is bowers.

Words near bower in the dictionary

  1. bowenite
  2. bowenites
  3. bowenoid
  4. Bowenvale
  5. Bowenwork
  6. bower
  7. bower anchor
  8. bower anchors
  9. Bower Ashton
  10. bower bird
  11. bower birds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bower (page history and authors); Bower (page history and authors); பந்தர் (Tamil) (page history and authors); bower (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bower (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); నికుంజము (Telugu) (page history and authors); bower (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bower (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bower (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bower (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); गृह (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); bower (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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