widow
n. countablen. a woman whose husband has died and who has not married again. In a joking way, it can also describe a woman whose partner is away doing a hobby all the time.
n. a woman who has lost her spouse by death and has not remarried. Often used humorously in compound forms to describe a woman whose partner is frequently absent due to a specific activity.
She became a widow at the age of forty.
During the long football season, she joked that she was a football widow because her husband was always at the stadium.
The young widow managed the estate with a level of financial acumen that surprised the traditional lawyers who had expected her to sell the property immediately.
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”).
Commonly used in the compound 'golf widow' or 'football widow' to humorously describe a partner left alone by a hobbyist.