embower

present singular third person embowers · participle present embowering · participle past embowered · past embowered · alternative imbower

1. poetictransitiveTo enclose something or someone as if in a bower; shelter with foliage.

   And the silent isle imbowers / The Lady of Shalott

   1852, Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

   5 more examples

   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

   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

   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

   The embowered lanes, and the primroses and the hawthorn

   1884, Donald Grant Mitchell, Bound Together

   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

2. intransitiveTo 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. intransitiveTo 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