▪ I. bowery, n. U.S.
(ˈbaʊərɪ)
[ad. Du. bouwerij ‘husbandry’, ‘farm’.]
a. A farm; a ‘plantation’. obs. exc. in the Bowery: in New York City, an area of a squalid and wretched character noted for its cheap places of amusement and frequented by homeless vagrants.
| 1787 M. Cutler in W. P. & J. P. Cutler Life & Corr. (1888) I. 305, I..left the city by way of the Bowery. 1809 W. Irving Knickerb. (1861) 116 His abode which he had fixed at a bowery, or country-seat, at a short distance from the city, just at what is now called Dutch Street. 1842 ― Braceb. Hall II. 225 He had purchased a farm, or, as the Dutch Settlers called it, a bowerie. c 1844 R. H. Collyer Lights & Shadows Amer. Life 7 The crowd and bustle of business in Chatham Street, and the Bowery. 1876 Bancroft Hist. U.S., The [Dutch] emigrants were scattered on boweries or plantations. 1930 E. Pound XXX Cantos xxviii. 130 Stiff as a cigar-store Indian from the Bowery. |
b. attrib., in sense ‘of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the Bowery’; Bowery boy, a rough or rowdy of a type at one time characteristic of the Bowery.
| 1840 Daily Picayune (New Orleans) 28 Aug. 2/1 The Bowery boys of New York have..eclipsed the nice young men of Baltimore. 1852 C. A. Bristed Upper Ten Thousand 29 Its occupants are of not-to-be-mistaken Bowery cut—veritable b'hoys. 1856 Spirit of Times 1 Nov. 149/1 Starflower of the blooming Bower-y girls. 1882 J. D. McCabe New York 642 The original ‘Bowery Girl’ must have been made of a rib of the original ‘Bowery Boy’, so exactly was she his counterpart. 1884 Thompson St. Poker Club 14 Mr. Tooter Williams and the odor of a Bowery cigar entered together. 1924 J. Buchan Three Hostages xviii. 263 ‘Hell!’ he cried, with a torrent of Bowery oaths. a 1952 E. J. Brady in R. Ward Penguin Bk. Austral. Ballads (1964) 185 The Bowery gal she knows 'er know; The Frisco gal is silly. |
Hence ˈboweryish a., smacking of the Bowery in New York.
| 1846 Poe Wks. (1864) III. 109 Elevating the tone of this ‘Editor's Table’ (which its best friends are forced to admit is a little Boweryish). |
▪ II. bowery, a.
(ˈbaʊərɪ)
[f. bower n.1 + -y1.]
Of the nature of a bower; embowering, leafy.
| 1704 Pope Windsor For. 262 Bow'ry mazes and surrounding greens. 1824 Miss Mitford Village Ser. i. (1863) 21 Shaded..by wild overgrown shrubs, bowery acacias. 1876 M. B. Edwards John & I, xxi. 170 The boweriest part of the garden. |