Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A woman whose spouse has died and who has not remarried.
- noun Informal A woman whose spouse is often away pursuing a sport or hobby.
- noun An additional hand of cards dealt face down in some card games, to be used by the highest bidder.
- noun A single, usually short line of type, as one ending a paragraph, carried over to the top of the next page or column.
- noun A short line of type at the bottom of a page, column, or paragraph.
- transitive verb To make a widow or widower of.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A whidah-bird.
- noun A woman who has lost her husband by death, In the early church, widows formed a separate class or order, whose duties were devotion and the care of the orphans, the sick, and prisoners.
- noun A European geometrid moth, Cidaria luctuata, more fully called
mourning widow : an English collectors' name. - noun In some cardgames, an additional hand dealt to the table, sometimes face up, sometimes not.
- To reduce to the condition of a widow; bereave of a husband or mate: commonly in the past participle.
- To endow with a widow's right.
- Figuratively, to deprive of anything regarded as analogous to a husband; bereave: sometimes with of.
- To survive as the widow of; be widow to.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Widowed.
- transitive verb To reduce to the condition of a widow; to bereave of a husband; -- rarely used except in the past participle.
- transitive verb To deprive of one who is loved; to strip of anything beloved or highly esteemed; to make desolate or bare; to bereave.
- transitive verb rare To endow with a widow's right.
- transitive verb obsolete To become, or survive as, the widow of.
- noun A woman who has lost her husband by death, and has not married again; one living bereaved of a husband.
- noun (Card Playing) In various games (such as “hearts”), any extra hand or part of a hand, as one dealt to the table. It may be taken by one of the players under certain circumstances.
- noun See under
Grass . - noun [Colloq.] a woman separated from her husband; a grass widow.
- noun (Zoöl.) the macavahu.
- noun (Zoöl.) a small South American monkey (
Callithrix lugens ); -- so called on account of its color, which is black except the dull whitish arms, neck, and face, and a ring of pure white around the face. - noun (Eng. Law) in London, the apparel and furniture of the bedchamber of the widow of a freeman, to which she was formerly entitled.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
woman whosehusband hasdied (and has not re-married); feminine ofwidower . - noun informal, in combination A woman whose husband is often away
pursuing asport , etc. - noun An additional
hand of cards dealtface down in somecard games , to be used by the highest bidder. - noun printing A
single line oftype that ends aparagraph , carried over to the nextpage orcolumn . - noun type of
venomous spider, of the genusLatrodectus - verb transitive To make a widow (or
widower ) of someone; to cause the death of one's spouse.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a woman whose husband is dead especially one who has not remarried
- verb cause to be without a spouse
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Mr. Friendly came in, and the widow and he, were soon as delighted as Fanny could be; he asked the dear _widow_ to change her estate; -- she consented at once, and a kiss sealed her fate.
The Canadian Elocutionist Anna Kelsey Howard
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"The name widow means ostracisation, which means all fault lies in the women," said Nighat Shafi Pandit, who founded the Help foundation to assist orphans and underprivileged women.
Plight of young brides in Kashmir, sold to older strangers for a pittance 2012
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I'm no longer a mother, I'm no longer a wife and I hate the word widow.
Change Susan Gibb 2011
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And you know how you see people, Larry, who walk and they've got what you call a widow's hump?
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And you know how you see people, Larry, who walk and they've got what you call a widow's hump?
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"We have sent you out" and then the cable launches out into an inventory of the forces entrusted to me which, though very detailed, is yet largely based on what we call the widow's cruse principle.
Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 Ian Hamilton 1900
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Accidental Identity, and the word "widow" and widowhood as a kind of club nobody chooses to join -- and my own arrogance in thinking I am/was special in my resistance to the word or its imposed meaning.
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Max Benavidez 2011
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"It's not that big of a deal," he says, "but people see the word 'widow' in a name and freak out completely."
News - latimes.com 2011
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"We've seen a few of what we call widow makers, dangling branches," said Virgil Taylor, a Fort Worth Parks Department worker.
Dallas / Fort Worth news, weather, sports, traffic and video from cbs11tv.com 2010
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Simunition and air-soft type practice, followed up by a letter from the department to the "widow" is needed.
Spray and Pray: Why cops should go back to carrying revolvers 2006
johnmperry commented on the word widow
also
In typesetting, a widow is the last line of a paragraph printed by itself at the top of a page.
cf orphan
July 18, 2008
IndiaAmos commented on the word widow
In typography, a widow is "A very short line that appears at the end of a paragraph, column, or page, or at the top of a column or page.These awkward typographic configurations should be corrected editorially." (http://www.typographicdesign4e.com/resources_glossary.html#anchor-w)
February 26, 2009