widow

n. a woman whose husband has died and who has not married again.

n. a woman who has lost her spouse by death and has not remarried.

“The elderly widow lived alone in the house where she and her husband had spent forty years.”

“After becoming a widow in her early thirties, she devoted her energy to managing the family estate and ensuring her children's education.”

n. you use this to describe someone whose partner is always busy with a hobby or job.

n. a person whose spouse is frequently absent due to a specific occupation or hobby, often used in compounds like 'golf widow'.

“During the football season, she joked that she was a 'football widow' because her husband was always at the stadium.”

“He described himself as a 'work widow' during the months his partner was traveling across the country for the political campaign.”

Humorous · Informal

n. a single word or short line of text that appears alone at the top of a new page.

n. a single line of type that ends a paragraph but is separated from the rest of the text by a page or column break.

“The editor asked me to fix the widow at the top of page five to make the layout look better.”

“Professional typesetters adjust character spacing and line breaks to eliminate widows and orphans, ensuring a clean visual flow across the spread.”

Technical

n. a type of poisonous spider, often called a 'black widow'.

n. any venomous spider of the genus Latrodectus, known for the female's tendency to eat the male after mating.

“Be careful when cleaning the garage, as a black widow might be hiding in the dark corners.”

“The researcher studied the neurotoxic venom of the Australian redback, a member of the widow family of spiders.”

v. to cause someone's husband or wife to die.

v. to cause the death of someone's spouse, thereby making them a widow or widower.

“The war widowed many young women in the village.”

“The mining disaster widowed dozens of women in the small community, leaving them to raise their families without a primary breadwinner.”

Literary