[f. BOW v.1 + -ED1.]
1. Bent, curved, crooked; (see the verb).
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 sow-tail 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. [The ordinary northern word for ‘bent,’ as a bored pin, a bowed street.]
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. Miss 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.
