bowery means sheltered by trees; leafy; shady. It carries an Arena rating of 1475, earned across 75 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bowery ranks #890 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #5,306 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #6,157 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #6,997 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words.
bowery is pronounced /ˈbaʊəɹi/.
Why “bowery” is a great word
BOWERY — [Adjective, Noun, Name] A term meaning leafy or shady; a farm or homestead; or the historic street and district in New York City. From Dutch bouwerij ("farm, homestead"), from bouwer ("farmer, builder"), from Middle Dutch bouwen ("to build, cultivate"). The place name in New York derives from the farm (bouwerij) of Peter Stuyvesant. Unlike "bower"—a constructed, leafy recess—or "plantation"—a large, labor-intensive estate—"bowery" historically suggests a simpler, self-sufficient homestead. It is the scent of turned earth in a tidy kitchen garden, the dappled light filtering through an orchard of gnarled apple trees, and the spectral persistence of that pastoral name along a corridor of concrete and neon—a ghost of cultivated ground, haunting the grid it preceded.
Etymology
From bower + -y.
adj
- Sheltered by trees; leafy; shady.e.g.“Such a man had no chance whatever in this flowery and bowery little suburb.” — 1906, George Gissing, “Fate and the Apothecary,”, in The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories:
name
- A surname from Middle English.
- A street and a district of New York City, whose residents were traditionally of a low socioeconomic class.e.g.“We were seen quarrelling this afternoon in a saloon over on the Bowery.” — 1919, Frank L. Packard, chapter 3, in The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale:
noun
- Structure with roof for shade but with no walls used for public gatherings. A pavilion.e.g.“The group performed in the old bowery, an open-air building with a roof of branches laid over vertical poles, the forerunner of the first tabernacle.” — 2005, Martha Sonntag Bradley-Evans, “Evolving Roles and Diverse Expressions”, in Women in Utah History: Paradigm Or Paradox, University Press of Colorado:
- In the early settlements of New York State, USA, a farm or estate.e.g.“His estate, or bowery, as it was called, has ever continued in the possession of his descendants.” — 1809, Washington Irving, chapter 65, in Knickerbocker's History of New York:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.