bower

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English bour, also bur and bure,^[2][3] inherited from Old English būr (“dwelling, cottage, inner room”),^[4][2][5][6] inherited from Proto-Germanic *būrą (“cabin, hut”),^[7][8] related to būan (“to dwell”).^[7][9][10] Kroonen reconstructs the pre-form Proto-Indo-European *bʰuh₂-ro-,^[7] and Etymonline traces it to *bheue- (“to be, exist, grow”), the root of be.^[11][12] The word is cognate with Old Saxon būr (“chamber, dwelling”), Old High German būr (“dwelling, cage”), German Bauer (“birdcage”), Old Norse búr (“chamber, pantry”) and Swedish bur (“cage”),^[6][13][7] and more distantly with Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌿𐌰𐌽 (bauan, “to dwell”).^[14][10] The spelling bower appeared gradually after 1350, from a tendency to pronounce a second syllable after a long vowel before -r, as in flower beside flour.^[10][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

A dwelling: the OED's first quotation is from Beowulf,^[6] which Barnhart dates to about 725.^[10] Dictionary.com says before 900.^[16] Old English also used the word for a private inner room, as distinct from the hall, and for a storehouse, and it glossed Latin camera.^[4][6]

Semantic evolution

The first senses are a dwelling and a private chamber; a lady's own apartment is recorded in Old English too.^[6][15] In Middle English the word still meant a house, a cottage or a shelter, and could be blended with burgh in the sense of a town.^[2] The modern idea of a secluded arbour became fully established only in the 16th century.^[12] The OED first records it in 1523, in Berners's translation of Froissart,^[6][11] though the Shorter Oxford dates it to the late 15th century,^[15] and Barnhart probably before 1400.^[10] By 1609, in Shakespeare's Sonnets, poets could use the word vaguely for an idealised abode,^[6] and Scott's Lady of the Lake (1810) has it for a fancy rustic cottage.^[6] Johnson (1755) derived the word from bough or from the verb bow, and put the sense of an arbour first.^[17] Later uses include the ironic underworld name "the Bower" for Newgate prison, recorded from 1809,^[18] and the display structure of the bowerbird, a name Etymonline dates to 1847, with the structure itself so called from 1869.^[11][6] In Scotland and northern England the word survived as a dialect term for an inner room or the bedroom of the master and mistress, though Wright already called it obsolete or nearly so.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 725 – a dwelling, in Beowulf.^[10][6]
• Old English – an inner room or private chamber; a lady's private apartment.^[6][4]
• 1506 – a covered stall or booth at a fair (rare).^[6][20]
• 1523 – a place closed in by branches, a leafy arbour.^[6][20] Barnhart dates this sense to probably before 1400.^[10]
• 1596 – verb, to lodge or shelter, in Spenser.^[6]
• 1599 – verb, to enclose, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.^[6]
• 1609 – an idealised, poetic abode.^[6]
• 1809 – underworld slang, Newgate prison.^[18]
• 1810 – a fancy rustic cottage.^[6]
• 1869 – the structure built by a bowerbird.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A shady place closed in by branches or climbing plants in a garden or wood; an arbour.^[21][14][6]
2. (poetic) A lady's private room in a medieval hall or castle; a boudoir.^[21][14][6]
3. An attractive country cottage or retreat.^[21][14][6]
4. (poetic) A dwelling, especially an idealised one.^[22][15]
5. The decorated structure built by a bowerbird.^[6][15]
6. (archaic) An inner room; a bedroom.^[22][15][6]

Verb

1. To enclose as in a bower; to embower.^[14][6][22]
2. (obsolete, 1596) To lodge or dwell.^[14][6][22]

Word family

• bowery
• bowerlike
• imbower
• virgin's bower

Related words

• embower
• bowerbird
• boor
• neighbor
• byre
• booth
• build
• be

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster and the OED enter other words spelled bower separately: the anchor carried at a ship's bow, from bow and the suffix -er; the jack in euchre, from German Bauer (“peasant”); and the Scottish farm tenant who rents a herd of cows, from a Scots word for a herd.^[14][6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ Mayhew, A. L.; Skeat, Walter W. (1888), A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
20. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
21. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
22. ^ a b c d The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers