WIDOW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does widow mean? 

• WIDOW (noun)
  The noun WIDOW has 1 sense:

1. a woman whose husband is dead especially one who has not remarried

  Familiarity information: WIDOW used as a noun is very rare.

• WIDOW (verb)
  The verb WIDOW has 1 sense:

1. cause to be without a spouse

  Familiarity information: WIDOW used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WIDOW (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman whose husband is dead especially one who has not remarried

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

widow; widow woman

Hypernyms ("widow" is a kind of...):

adult female; woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "widow"):

dowager (a widow holding property received from her deceased husband)

war widow (a woman whose husband has died in war)

Derivation:

widow (cause to be without a spouse)

widowhood (the state of being a widow who has not remarried)

widowhood (the time of a woman's life when she is a widow)

• WIDOW (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause to be without a spouse

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Context example:

The war widowed many women in the former Yugoslavia

Hypernyms (to "widow" is one way to...):

leave; leave behind (be survived by after one's death)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

widow (a woman whose husband is dead especially one who has not remarried)

 Context examples 

“You are the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery! Though why Rookery, I don't know!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

She is a widow, and much older than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with everybody.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She was a widow and poor.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"It was my father's last request to me," replied her husband, "that I should assist his widow and daughters."

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I think you said she was a widow, sir?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.'

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

She was a widow when I met her first, though quite young—only twenty-five.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)