Definition of "bower"

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.

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. Miller] for Taylor and Hessey, […], 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, [Act III, scene i]

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

O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell / When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend / In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?

c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act 3, scene 2, lines 80–82

[…] belts of thin white mist streaked the brown plough land in the hollow where Appleby could see the pale shine of a winding river. Across that in turn, meadow and coppice rolled away past the white walls of a village bowered in orchards, […]

1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict‎

Flora now calleth forth each flower, And bids make readie Maias bower

1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “Marche. Aegloga Tertius.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […]; reprinted as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, The Shepheardes Calender […], London: John C. Nimmo, […], 1890,

Yet the cards they were stocked / In a way that I grieve, / And my feelings were shocked / At the state of Nye's sleeve, / Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, / And the same with intent to deceive.

1870, Bret Harte, Plain Language from Truthful James

The bower aims his display straight at the dominant figure, who may reciprocate with a milder version of the same action.

1977, Desmond Morris, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior, page 144

His rawbone armes, whose mighty brawned bowrs / Were wont to riue steele plates, and helmets hew

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie