widow
Meanings
- A person whose spouse is absent:
- A person who has lost a spouse and hasn't remarried:
- A woman whose spouse (traditionally husband) has died (and who has not remarried); a woman in relation to her late spouse; feminine of widower.
- Any person whose spouse has died (and who has not remarried).
- A woman whose husband is often away pursuing a hobby, career, etc.
- An additional hand of playing cards dealt face-down in some card games, to be used by the highest bidder.
- A single line of type that ends a paragraph but is separated from it by being carried over to the next page or column.
- Any venomous spider of the genus Latrodectus (called "widows" because of the practice of sexual cannibalism observed among many of these species).
- To make a widow or widower of someone; to cause the death of the spouse of.
- To strip of anything valued.
- To endow with a widow's right.
- To be widow to.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwi- Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁- Proto-Indo-European *h₁widʰéwh₂ Proto-Germanic *widuwǭ Proto-West Germanic *widuwā Old English widuwe Middle English widwe English widow PIE word *dwóh₁ From Middle English widow, from Old English widuwe (“widow”), from Proto-West Germanic *widuwā (“widow”), from Proto-Germanic *widuwǭ (“widow”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁widʰéwh₂ (“widow”), possibly from *h₁weydʰh₁-, *widʰ- (“to separate, split, cleave, divide”), whence also wood from Old English widu, wudu. Cognates Cognate with Scots weedae, wedow, widdow (“widow”), Cimbrian bittaba (“widow”), Dutch weduwe, weeuw (“widow”), German Witwe (“widow”), Vilamovian wytwa (“widow”), Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌳𐌿𐍅𐍉 (widuwō, “widow”), Old Irish fedb (“widow”), Welsh gweddw (“widow”), Asturian and Spanish viuda (“widow”), Aragonese and Latin vidua (“widow”), Catalan vídua (“widow”), French veuve (“widow”), Galician and Portuguese viúva (“widow”), Italian vedova (“widow”), Romanian văduvă (“widow”), Ancient Greek ἠΐθεος (ēḯtheos, “bachelor”), Albanian ve (“widow, widower”), Belarusian удава́ (udavá, “widow”), Czech, Slovak, and Slovene vdova (“widow”), Polish gdowa, wdowa (“widow”), Russian and Ukrainian вдова́ (vdová, “widow”), Serbo-Croatian udova, у̀дова (“widow”), Central Kurdish بێوە (bêwe, “widow”), Ossetian идӕдз (idæʒ, “widowed”), Persian بیوه (bive, bêva, “widow”), Sanskrit विधवा (vidhavā, “widow”).