▪ I. bowed, ppl. a.1
(baʊd)
[f. bow v.1 + -ed1.]
1. Bent, curved, crooked; (see the verb).
The ordinary northern word for ‘bent’, as a bowed pin, a bowed street.
| 1483 Cath. Angl. 38 Bowed, clinatus, deuexus. 1562 J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 152 Boude wands serue for sumwhat. 1674 N. Fairfax Bulk & Selv. Contents, The springiness of..boughed bodies. 1674 Grew Anat. Plants i. iv. §8 And if the Leaf have but one main Fiber, that also is postur'd in a bowed or Lunar Figure; as in Mint and others. 1785 Burns Halloween iv, A runt was like a sowtail Sae bow't that night. 1874 Boutell Arms & Arm. vii. 114 These shields were generally ‘bowed’ on their front face, that is, they generally presented a convex external contour. 1885 Times 4 June 10/2 He [a horse] had been under suspicion on account of a ‘bowed tendon’ from his earliest appearance on the turf. |
2. Bent down under a load, weight of years, etc.
| 1848 Kingsley Saint's Trag. ii. xi. 134 How you'll welcome us, Returned in triumph, bowed with paynim spoils. 1864 Tennyson En. Ard. 704 Enoch was so brown, so bow'd, So broken. 1864 C. M. Yonge Trial II. 18 A mute smoothing of his bowed shoulders. |
b. fig.
| 1382 Wyclif Baruch ii. 18 The soule that..goth bowid, and meekid. 1873 Symonds Grk. Poets vii. 228 Nay, do not pine thus, bowed beneath my burden. |
▪ II. bowed, ppl. a.2
(bəʊd)
[f. bow n.1 and v.2 + -ed1.]
Furnished with a bow (in various senses); played with a (violin) bow. In Her. = embowed.
| 1425 Acts Jas. I (1597) §60 Ȝeamen..sufficientlie bowed and schafted, with sword and buckler and knife. 1823 Rutter Fonthill, The window is to the west, large and bowed. 1837 H. Martineau Soc. in Amer. III. 88 The young women, in cotton gowns and braided and bowed hair. 1838 G. Hogarth Musical Hist. II. 153 Quartets, and trios, for bowed instruments. 1885 Pall Mall G. 4 May 4/1 The ‘bowed’ passages were much too rapid. |
▪ III. bowed, ppl. a.3
(baʊd)
[f. bow n.3 + -ed2.]
Furnished with a bow; prob. only in comb.
| 1747 W. Horsley The Fool (1748) II. 300 Full-bowed Ships..will make better Way through the Water. |