1 [V] ~ (down) (to / before sb/sth) to move your head or the top half of your body forwards and downwards as a sign of respect or as a greeting:
He bowed low to the assembled crowd. * The people all bowed down before the Emperor.
2 [VN] to move your head forwards and downwards:
She bowed her head in shame. * They stood in silence with their heads bowed.
3 to bend or make sth bend:
[V] The pines bowed in the wind. * [VN] Their backs were bowed under the weight of their packs.
IDIOMS
bow and scrape (disapproving) to be too polite to an important person in order to gain their approval:
She was beginning to tire of all their bowing and scraping.
moreatSHOTn.
PHRASALVERBS
bow down to sb/sth (disapproving) to allow sb to tell you what to do
bow out (of sth) to stop taking part in an activity, especially one in which you have been successful in the past:
She has finally decided it's time to bow out of international tennis.
bow to sth to agree unwillingly to do sth because other people want you to:
They finally bowed to pressure from the public. * She bowed to the inevitable (= accepted a situation in which she had no choice) and resigned.
Part of speech: noun
1 the act of bending your head or the upper part of your body forward in order to greet sb or to show respect:
She gave a slight bow of her head in greeting. * The messenger made a formal bow and left the room.
2 (also bows [pl.]) the front part of a boat or ship
compareSTERNn.
IDIOMS
take a / your bow (of a performer) to bow to the audience as they are APPLAUDING you:
She came back on stage to take another bow.
moreatSHOT
noun, verb-see also BOW
Part of speech: noun
1 a weapon used for shooting arrows, consisting of a long curved piece of wood with a tight string joining its ends:
He was armed with a bow and arrow.
2 a knot with two LOOPS and two loose ends which is used for decoration on clothes, in hair, etc. or for tying shoes:
to tie your shoelaces in a bow * Her hair was tied back in a neat bow. * a dress decorated with bows and ribbons
3 a long thin piece of wood with thin string stretched along it, used for playing musical instruments such as the violin
IDIOMS see STRINGn.
verb [V, VN] to use a bow to play a musical instrument that has strings
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for bow is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is bow a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, bow is tagged as verb.
Does bow appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — bow appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
