widow

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   cause to be without a spouse

   The war widowed many women in the former Yugoslavia

2. 2
   verb

   To strip of anything valued.

   Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love. My Arthur! whom I shall not see ⁠Till all my widow’d race be run; ⁠Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

3. 3
   noun

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

4. 4
   noun

   A person whose spouse is absent:

5. 5
   noun

   An additional hand of playing cards dealt face-down in some card games, to be used by the highest bidder.

6. 6
   noun

   A single line of type that ends a paragraph but is separated from it by being carried over to the next page or column.

7. 7
   noun

   Any venomous spider of the genus Latrodectus (called "widows" because of the practice of sexual cannibalism observed among many of these species).

8. 8
   verb

   To make a widow or widower of someone; to cause the death of the spouse of.

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. Cogn…