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- Old English widewe, wuduwe, from Proto-Germanic *widuwō (source also of Old Saxon widowa, Old Frisian widwe, Middle Dutch, Dutch weduwe, Dutch weeuw, Old High German wituwa, German Witwe, Gothic widuwo), from PIE adjective *widhewo (source also of Sanskrit vidhuh "lonely, solitary," vidhava "widow;" Avestan vithava, Latin vidua, Old Church Slavonic vidova, Russian vdova, Old Irish fedb, Welsh guedeu "widow;" Persian beva, Greek eitheos "unmarried man;" Latin viduus "bereft, void"), from root...
www.etymonline.com/word/widow
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Sep 10, 2018 · Old English widewe, wuduwe, from Proto-Germanic *widuwō (source also of Old Saxon widowa, Old Frisian widwe, Middle Dutch, Dutch weduwe, Dutch weeuw, Old High German wituwa, German Witwe, Gothic widuwo), from PIE adjective *widhewo (source also of Sanskrit vidhuh "lonely, solitary," vidhava "widow;" Avestan vithava, Latin vidua, Old Church ...
- Deutsch (German)
Bedeutung von widow: Witwe; Altenglisch widewe , wuduwe ,...
- 한국어 (Korean)
widow 뜻: 과부; 올드 잉글리쉬 widewe, wuduwe는 게르만어의 원형 *widuwō(동음이의어도...
- Widowhood
Widow's peak is from the belief that hair growing to a point...
- Widower
Widow's peak is from the belief that hair growing to a point...
- Widen
word-forming element making verbs (such as darken, weaken)...
- Widespread
a word of widespread application to lumpish things or...
- Deutsch (German)
widow is a word inherited from Germanic. See etymology. Nearby entries. wide-where, adv. late Old English–1916.
A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died and has usually not remarried. The male form, "widower", is first attested in the 14th century, by the 19th century supplanting "widow" with reference to men. [1] The adjective for either sex is widowed.
Oct 25, 2024 · A woman who has lost her husband by death and has not married again. The word comes (in Old English) from an Indo-European root meaning ‘be empty’, and may be compared with Sanskrit vidh ‘be destitute’, Latin viduus ‘bereft, widowed’, and Greek ēitheos ‘unmarried man’.
OED's earliest evidence for widow is from before 1400, in Cursor Mundi: a Northumbrian poem of the 14th century. It is also recorded as a noun from the Old English period (pre-1150). widow is formed within English, by conversion.
Oct 6, 2014 · Research by Cambridge University historian Dr Amy Erickson, published in the autumn issue of History Workshop Journal, unravels the complex history of an extraordinarily slippery word and suggests that the title of Mrs, pronounced ‘mistress’, was for centuries applied to all adult women of higher social status, whether married or not.
Apr 13, 2011 · Old English had on equal footing both the masculine widowa and the feminine widowe, which converge as “widow” in Early Modern English, and which is used for both genders by authors down until the 19th century. “Widower” first occurs in the 14th century as a way of disambiguating “widow”.
