widows

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of widow.

   The charity provides housing and support to widows and their children.

   Several widows from the parish attended the memorial service together.

   Note

   The plural carries every sense of the singular, not only the bereaved. Card players deal widows face-down for the highest bidder. Typesetters guard against widows, the last lines of a paragraph carried over to the next page or column. The word also names the venomous Latrodectus spiders, called widows for the sexual cannibalism seen in many species. The same spelling serves the verb meaning 'makes a widow of'.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of widow: to make a widow of someone.

   Prolonged violence widows a great many women and leaves their children fatherless.

   In the third act, a stray bullet widows the bride on her wedding night.

   Note

   A verb that always needs an object: something widows someone, and the subject is usually the cause of the death, such as a war, a disease or an accident. It can also be used figuratively, meaning to strip someone of anything they value. When the bereaved person is the focus, English tends to switch to the passive (she was widowed), so this form mostly appears with a cause as its subject.

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