• (British) IPA: /baʊ.əɹ/, /baʊəɹ/

  (British) IPA: /bəʊ.əɹ/, /bəʊəɹ/

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.

2. (literary) A dwelling; a picturesque country cottage, especially one that is used as a retreat.
   • 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: Printed [by T. Miller] for Taylor and Hessey, […], OCLC 1467112 ↗, lines 1–5, page 3 ↗:

     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.

3. A shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or woods.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3 Scene 1

     […] 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; […]

4. (ornithology) A large structure made of grass and bright objects, used by the bower bird during courtship displays.

• boudoir

• French: boudoir
• German: Boudoir
• Russian: будуа́р
• Spanish: tocador

• German: Gartenlaube (in a garden), Laube

• German: Laube

bower (bowers, present participle bowering; past and past participle bowered)

1. To embower; to enclose.
2. (obsolete) To lodge.
   • 1604 William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well AW III.v.34 "Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?"

bower (plural bowers)

1. A peasant; a farmer.

bower (plural bowers)

1. Either of the two highest trumps in euchre.

bower (plural bowers)

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

bower (plural bowers)

1. One who bows or bends.
2. A muscle that bends a limb, especially the arm.

   • His rawbone arms, whose mighty brawned bowers / Were wont to rive steel plates and helmets hew.

bower (plural bowers)

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

bower (plural bowers)

1. (obsolete, falconry) A young hawk, when it begins to leave the nest.

1. Surname
   • 2007, Antony Armstrong-Jones Snowdon (Earl of), ‎Robin Muir, ‎Pallant House Gallery, In Camera: Snowdon (page 86)

     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.