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• bowery
  bowery

  adjective

  containing bowers; leafy; shady.
• Bowery
  Bowery

  noun

  a street in New York City noted for its cheap hotels and bars, frequented by vagrants and drunks

bowery

¹ American  

[bou-uh-ree] / ˈbaʊ ə ri /

adjective

1. containing bowers; leafy; shady.

   a bowery maze.

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bowery ² American  

[bou-uh-ree, bou-ree] / ˈbaʊ ə ri, ˈbaʊ ri /

noun

• boweries
  plural

1. (among the Dutch settlers of New York) a farm or country seat.

2. the Bowery, a street and area in New York City, historically noted for its cheap hotels and saloons, and populated by people who were destitute and homeless.

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Bowery British  

/ ˈbaʊərɪ /

noun

1. a street in New York City noted for its cheap hotels and bars, frequented by vagrants and drunks

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Bowery Cultural  

1. A section of lower Manhattan in New York City.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• boweries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of bowery¹

First recorded in 1695–1705; bower ¹ + -y ¹

Origin of bowery²

An Americanism dating back to 1640–50; from Dutch bouwerij “farm,” equivalent to bouw “cultivation” + -erij -ery

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bowery Bowery boweries

For years it’s been the place where I have routinely purchased pairs of light hickory bowery pants in a classic fit.

From Forbes ● Jun. 15, 2015

I will likely continue buying classic-fit light hickory bowery pants until they stop making them, or until I never go to an office again.

From Forbes ● Jun. 15, 2015

Her parents had died, and she had been found a home on Brister Miller's bowery farm.

From Harper's Round Table, October 29, 1895 by Various

From the corner window of the hotel you could see down into the bowery seclusion of Grange Lane, and Mr Wodehouse's famous apple-trees holding tempting clusters over the high wall.

From The Doctor's Family by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

There are streets and squares and alleys in downtown New York that look now exactly as they did when Times Square was a cow pasture and the Bowery really bowery.

From The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces by Joyce Kilmer

But that friend, performance artist Leigh Bowery, had posed for Freud and thought she’d make a great sitter because she was reliable and adventurous, she said, and made the introduction.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026

It is flanked by low-rise apartment buildings and retail spaces typical of the Bowery neighborhood.

From Barron's ● Mar. 18, 2026

By the time they reached the Bowery, the snow was a foot deep on the sidewalk.

From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2024

He would go on to launch such establishments as the Waverly Inn, the Bowery Hotel and the Jane Hotel.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2024

Then, after we’d collected about ten huge garbage bags full of coats, my mom and dad and I drove all the way downtown to the Bowery Mission to donate the coats.

From "Auggie & Me" by R. J. Palacio

Some of the early settlers built boweries of brush under which they rolled their covered wagons, to secure better protection from the pitiless Arizona summer sun, and with no other home for weeks.

From Mormon Settlement in Arizona A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert by James H. McClintock

The boweries were more completely covered, and a greater proportion of bark was used in the construction of them.

From Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi by David Ives Bushnell

The making of such "boweries" was continued by the Saints in Utah.

From The Story of the Mormons, from the date of their origin to the year 1901 by William Alexander Linn