bower
/ˈbaʊə(ɹ)/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.00 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
noun
A large structure made of grass, twigs, etc., and decorated with bright objects, used by male bower birds during courtship displays.
noun
Either of the two highest trumps in the card games euchre and five hundred (where the joker is omitted).
Example Sentences
- "Give me my lute in bed now as I lie, / And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower."
- "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."
- "While friends arrived in circles gay, To visit Damon's bower"
- "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."
- "[…]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;[…]"
- "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."
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Music.