widow is a woman whose spouse has died and a widower is a man whose spouse has died.
Wow interesting, when was the word widow first recorded in history?
Widow
A widow is a woman whose spouse has died and a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The treatment of widows and widowers around the world varies.
Terminology.
A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed "widowhood". These terms are not applied to a divorcé(e) following the death of an ex-spouse.
The term "widowhood" can be
is also slowly falling into disuse in the English language due to attempts to neutralize professional terms; it is therefore less commonly applied to new terms nowadays.
Reasons for use.
An archaic English term for a woman who has never married is a spinster, while a woman who is divorced is a divorcée, and a woman whose spouse has died is a widow. "Spinster" often implied that the woman was older than the age when most women traditionally marry and that she would probably never marry; a more derogatory