bower
/ˈbaʊə(ɹ)/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms bowers bowering bowered bowre bougher
- noun A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
- noun (literary) A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
- noun A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
- noun (ornithology) A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.
- verb To embower; to enclose.
- verb (obsolete) To lodge.
- noun A peasant; a farmer.
- noun Either of the two highest trumps in the card games euchre and five hundred (where the joker is omitted).
- noun (nautical) A type of ship's anchor, carried at the bow.
- noun One who bows or bends.
- noun A muscle that bends a limb, especially the arm.
- noun One who plays any of several bow instruments, such as the musical bow or diddley bow.
- noun (falconry) A young hawk, when it begins to leave the nest.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
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”).
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.
From the bow of a ship + -er.
Webster’s 1913
- noun One who bows or bends.
- noun An anchor carried at the bow of a ship.
- noun One of the two highest cards in the pack commonly used in the game of euchre. Right bower, the knave of the trump suit, the highest card (except the "Joker") in the game.
- noun Anciently, a chamber; a lodging room; esp., a lady's private apartment.
Etymology [From Bow, v. & n.]
Etymology [G. bauer a peasant. So called from the figure sometimes used for the knave in cards. See Boor.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “bower”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details