Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See arbor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A shady sitting place, usually in a park or garden, and usually surrounded by climbing shrubs or vines and other vegetation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a framework that supports climbing plants

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English arbour, from Old French erbier ("field, meadow, kitchen garden"), from erbe ("grass, herb"), from Latin herba ("grass, herb"). The phonetic change to ar- was assisted by association with Latin arbor ("tree").

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Examples

  • They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house.

    Madame Bovary 2003

  • In the rose garden was an arbour smothered in riotous bloom, and in the arbour was a divan, wide and low and voluptuously soft, meet for the repose of an invalid on a languorous afternoon, or indeed any other time.

    The Definite Object A Romance of New York Jeffery Farnol 1915

  • It looked just the same as the other parts of the curtains -- only half hidden among the bushy leaves near the rustic doorway that Lena called the arbour, she found out a queer brown little face that she had not seen before.

    Hoodie Mrs. Molesworth 1880

  • They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house.

    Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1850

  • Behind is a garden about the size of a good drawing-room, with an arbour, which is a complete sentry-box of privet.

    Our Village Mary Russell Mitford 1821

  • Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire — making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.

    David Copperfield 2007

  • In the middle stood a small mound, looking as if it had been made artificially, with a kind of arbour on the top overgrown with some sort of creeper and shut in by trees.

    Chatterbox, 1905. Various

  • Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a foot-stool in front of the fire—making a kind of arbour of the dining-table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.

    XXII. Some Old Scenes, and Some New People 1917

  • Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire - making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.

    David Copperfield Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1917

  • But one of the principal paths led to a kind of arbour, or temple, where long ago palms had been planted in a ring, and had formed

    The Golden Silence 1901

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