bower – English noun declension

English noun forms of bower

Noun: bower
Singularbower
Pluralbowers

Sample Sentences

  • 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:]
  • While friends arrived in circles gay,
  • To visit Damon's bower [1748, 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:]
  • […]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] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:]
  • 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:]
  • The entire town mated together, in the leafy bowers that had sprung up among the washing-machines and television sets in the shopping mall, on the settees and divans by the furniture store, in the tropical paradises of the suburban gardens. [1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 30:]
  • The branches met overhead in a kind of bower and the three cops stood in the shade and studied the roughcast gable of the cottage, maybe fifty yards on up the hill. [2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 444:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English bour, from Old English būr, from Proto-West Germanic *būr, from Proto-Germanic *būrą (“room, abode”).
2. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Búur (“storage room, utility room; cage”), German Bauer (“birdcage”), Old Norse búr (“cage”) (Danish bur, Norwegian Bokmål bur, Swedish bur). See: Middle English Nouns 'bour', German Nouns 'Bauer', Old Norse Nouns 'búr', Danish Nouns 'bur', Norwegian Bokmål Nouns 'bur', Swedish Nouns 'bur'.

Verbs referencing "bower"

Faroese Nouns búr, Icelandic Nouns búr, English Nouns buron, French Nouns buron.