See Also: WIDOW(law)
widow(2)(dictionary)
widow(medicine)
widow(dictionary)
widow(1)(dictionary)
war widow(dictionary)
widow(dictionary)
Widow McCleary's(tourism)
black widow(encyclopedia)
Black Widow(recipes)

unilingual (iou) and widow(1) (iou)


unilingual (iou)



unilingual adjective & noun. M19.
[from UNI- + LINGUAL.]
A. adjective. = MONOLINGUAL adjective 1. M19.
b. noun. = MONOLINGUAL noun. M20.
unilingually adverb L20.

widow(1) (iou)



widow noun1.
[Old English widewe, wuduwe = Old Frisian widwe, Old Saxon widowa, Old High German wituwa (Dutch weduwe, weef, German Witwe), Gothic widuwo, adjective formation of Indo-European base repr. by Sanskrit vidhava widow, Greek eitheos unmarried man, Latin viduus bereft, void, widowed.]
A woman who has lost her husband by death and has not married again. Formerly (now arch. & dial.) prefixed as a title before the surname of such a woman. OE.
A. S. Byatt This stone is dedicated to Randolph Henry Ash..by his sorrowing widow and wife of more than 45 years.
b. A female animal, esp. a hen bird, that has lost its mate. ME.
c. (More fully widow bewitched) a wife separated from or deserted by her husband (now dial.). Now chiefly (colloq.) as 2nd elem. of comb., a wife whose husband devotes most of his time to a specified activity and is seldom at Home. LME.
business widow, Golf widow, etc.
Guardian One..unit, aware of the dangers of creating 'TA widows' opens its bar..to wives.
d. Ecclesiastical. Any of a class of devout widows in the early Christian Church. L16.
= WIDOW-BIRD. M18.
An extra hand dealt to the table in certain card-Games. L19.
Typography. A short (esp. single-word) last line of a paragraph left at the top of a page or column and considered undesirable. M20.
Phrases: black widow: see BLACK adjective. GRASS WIDOW. Merry Widow: see MERRY adjective. MOURNFUL widow. mourning widow: see MOURNING ppl adjective. the widow [translation of French la Veuve Clicquot, a firm of Wine merchants] colloq. champagne. the Widow of Windsor, the Widow at Windsor slang (orig. Services') Queen Victoria, whose husband predeceased her by forty years. virgin widow: see VIRGIN adjective. widow bewitched: see sense 1c above.
Comb.: widow-finch a widow-bird, an indigo-bird; widow-maker a killer or potential killer of men; spec. (N. Amer. slang) a dead branch caught high in a tree which may fall on a person below; widow-man dial. a widower; widow's CRUSE; widow's men Hist. fictitious crewmen whose names were entered on a ship's books, their pay being credited to a widows' pension fund; widow's mite: see MITE noun2 1b. widow's peak: see PEAK noun1 1e; widow's walk N. Amer. a railed or balustraded platform built on the roof, orig. in early New England houses, esp. for providing an unimpeded view of the sea; widow's weeds: see WEED noun2 8; widow-wail the shrub mezereon, Daphne mezereum; also, a dwarf evergreen shrub of the western Mediterranean region, Cneorum tricoccon (family Cneoraceae), with pink sweet-scented flowers; widow woman (chiefly arch. & dial.) = sense 1 above.
widowhood noun (a) the state or condition of a widow (or widower); the time during which one is a widow (or widower); (b) (rare, Shakes.) an estate settled on a widow: OE.
widowly adjective & adverb (a) adjective pertaining to, characteristic of, or befitting a widow; (b) adverb in a way befitting a widow, like a widow: M16.