Bow

How to spell bow

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bow

What does bow mean?

1. verbTo bend the head or upper body forward as a sign of respect, greeting, or acknowledgement.
2. nounThe front end of a ship or boat.
3. nounA knot tied with two loops, used to fasten or decorate.
4. nounA curved weapon used with a taut string to shoot arrows.

Bow in a sentence

• verb

  The performers bow to the audience after the final song.

• noun

  Waves crashed against the bow as the ferry left the harbour.

• noun

  She tied the gift ribbon into a neat bow on top of the box.

• noun

  The archer drew back the string of the wooden bow and aimed at the target.

• verb

  Guests are expected to bow slightly when greeting the elderly host.

• noun

  The captain stood at the bow scanning the horizon for the lighthouse.

Where does bow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word actually braids together more than one Old English root that happen to share a spelling today. The verb meaning 'to bend forward' descends from Old English 'bugan', meaning 'to bend' or 'to stoop', a thoroughly Germanic word related to forms across the old Northern languages. The sense of a looped knot and the archer's weapon both come from the closely linked Old English 'boga', meaning something bent or curved, which is why a bow tied in a ribbon and a bow that shoots arrows share the same arched idea. The nautical 'bow', the front of a ship, arrived later, probably during the 1600s from a Low German or Dutch source 'boog', again carrying the notion of a shoulder or bend. Because all of these meanings ultimately circle back to the idea of bending, English ended up writing them with one short, deceptively simple spelling that hides two different sounds. The spelling trap is less about letters and more about its homophones: 'bow' the knot sounds exactly like 'beau', and 'bow' the bend sounds like 'bough'.

How the word is built

• Single morpheme; the spelling 'bow' covers two distinct pronunciations, /baʊ/ and /boʊ/, with no internal prefix or suffix.