Bowed

How to spell bowed

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bowed

What does bowed mean?

1. verbBent the head or upper body forward as a gesture of greeting, respect, or submission.
2. verbCurved, warped, or bent into the shape of a bow, often under strain or with age.

Bowed in a sentence

• The performers bowed to the cheering audience at the final curtain.

• The heavy textbooks had bowed the cheap pine shelf over the years.

• He bowed his head quietly during the memorial service.

• Damp weather had bowed the wooden floorboards in the hallway.

Where does bowed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Both readings of this word trace back to the Old English verb bugan, meaning 'to bend' or 'to stoop', which itself grew from a Germanic root shared with words across the old Northern languages. From the same family came the Old English noun boga, the curved shooting weapon we still call a bow, since a bow is simply something bent into a curve. Over centuries the single act of bending split into two everyday ideas: bowing the body forward as a sign of respect or submission, and the static curve of anything bent like an archer's bow. English kept the one spelling for both, even though the vowel drifted apart in speech, which is why 'bowed' is a true heteronym sounding either like 'loud' or like 'load'. The respectful bow of the head and the bow of a ribbon are, surprisingly, the very same word at root. The persistent spelling with -ow- is a reminder that the curve and the courtesy were once one and the same gesture of bending.

How the word is built

• bow (Old English bugan, to bend)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)