widow

noun

1. A person whose spouse is absent:
2. (uncommon)A person whose spouse is absent:

   “Now that he is a widow, he tries to win Olivia back through the songs and the music that brought them together all those years ago, leaving Olivia torn between moving forward with Josh or falling into the arms of the man she truly loves.”

3. (broadly, humorous, in-compounds, informal, often, sarcastic)A person whose spouse is absent:

   “My aunt is a football widow in the fall and a basketball widow in the winter and early spring.”

   “I had been feeling like a bowling-alley widow, but knew he loved the game, so I suggested we join a mixed league.”

   “And how many betting widows do I see at the hospital, who hardly see their husbands while the betting shops are open!”

4. An additional hand of playing cards dealt face-down in some card games, to be used by the highest bidder.
5. A single line of type that ends a paragraph but is separated from it by being carried over to the next page or column.
6. Any venomous spider of the genus Latrodectus (called "widows" because of the practice of sexual cannibalism observed among many of these species).

verb

1. (transitive)To make a widow or widower of someone; to cause the death of the spouse of.
2. (figuratively, transitive)To strip of anything valued.

   “Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love. My Arthur! whom I shall not see ⁠Till all my widow’d race be run; ⁠Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.”

3. (obsolete, transitive)To endow with a widow's right.
4. (obsolete, transitive)To be widow to.