Table of Contents
Definition of Widow
(noun) An individual whose spouse is dead, especially one who has not remarried.
Widow Pronunciation
Syllabification: wid·ow
Audio Pronunciation
Phonetic Spelling
- American English – /wId-oh/
- British English – /wId-oh/
International Phonetic Alphabet
- American English – /ˈwɪdoʊ/
- British English – /ˈwɪdəʊ/
Usage Notes
- Plural: widows
- The condition of being a widow is called widowhood or widowerhood.
- More precisely, a man is called a “widower” and a woman is called a “widow” or “widow woman“.
- In 1897, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) published Suicide and found a correlation between suicide and widowhood which he called domestic anomie.
- Helena Znaniecka Lopata (1925–2003) studied widowhood from the sociological perspective in Widowhood in an American City (1973), Women as Widows: Support Systems (1979), and Current Widowhood: Myths and Realities (1996).
Additional Information
- Family and Kinship Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Word origin of “widow” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
Related Terms
Cite the Definition of Widow
ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2015. “widow.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved September 17, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/widow/).
APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)
widow. (2015). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/widow/
Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2015. “widow.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed September 17, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/widow/.
MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)
“widow.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2015. Web. 17 Sep. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/widow/>.