Dictionary

embower en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ɛmˈbaʊɚ/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Ultimately from Old English būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz. Cognate with German Bauer (“birdcage”), Old Norse búr, (whence Danish bur, Swedish bur (“cage”)). Equivalent to en- + bower.

Meanings

1. (poetic, transitive) To enclose something or someone as if in a bower; shelter with foliage.
   • The embowered lanes, and the primroses and the hawthorn 1884, Donald Grant Mitchell, Bound Together:
   • Her hand he seis’d, and to a shadie bank, Thick overhead with verdant roof imbowr’d 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
   • And the silent isle imbowers / The Lady of Shalott 1852, Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott:
   • The house stood in a situation so embowered, solitary, and remote from others, that when evening closed in, Mrs. De Brooke and her daughter, had they not reposed their security on the usual tranquillity of the neighbourhood, might have felt their courage forsake them;[…] 1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter XIX, in Duty and Inclination: […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 243:
   • A few rods farther led him past the old black Presbyterian church, with its square tower, embowered in a stately grove; past the Catholic church, with its many crosses, and a painted wooden figure of St. James in a recess beneath the gable; and past the old Jefferson House, once the leading hotel of the town, in front of which political meetings had been held, and political speeches made, and political hard cider drunk, in the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars:
   • A small Indian village, pleasantly embowered in a grove of spreading elms. 1809, Diedrich Knickerbocker [pseudonym; Washington Irving], A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), New York, N.Y.: Inskeep & Bradford, […], →OCLC:
2. (intransitive) To lodge or rest in or as in a bower.
   • But the small birds in their wide boughs embowring / Chaunted their sundrie tunes with sweete consent;
3. (intransitive) To form a bower.
   • Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades High overarch't imbowr; or scattered sedge Afloat 1667, John Milton, “Book XI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 302-305:

Forms

Deriveds

unembowered · embowerment

Translations (1)

nl omhullen (enclose something or someone as if in a bower; shelter with foliage)