What is "dowagers"

Usage examples of "dowagers".

The two proud dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together.

There were also several dowagers, suffering from nervous disorders and from a conviction that a recital of their various ills, and the many treatments they had undergone must be of as much interest to those of their acquaintances whom they could contrive to buttonhole as they were to themselves.

That might shock some of the starchier dowagers, for although the waltz was becoming increasingly fashionable in London it was never danced at any of the Bath Assemblies.

It was informal, but most of the very young gentlemen present had engaged the very young ladies of their choices to go down to it under their escorts, and just as Miss Wychwood, an accomplished hostess, had matched the dowagers with appropriate partners, she found herself being confronted by Lord Beckenham, begging for the honour of leading her down to supper.

I find it intolerable that anyone as young and as beautiful as you are should set up as a duenna, behaving as though you were a dowager when you should be going to balls and assemblies for the pleasure of dancing till dawn, not to spend the night talking to the real dowagers, and keeping a watchful eye on a silly chit of a girl only a few years younger than you are yourself!

Meade and the other dowagers who had been so cool to her during the last days of the war, forgot her flighty conduct and their disapproval of it and recalled only that she had suffered in their common defeat and that she was Pitty’s niece and Charles’ widow.

Atlanta, like all Southern towns, had its share of dowagers whom no one cared to cross.

She was, as the dowagers said, such an excellent and wholesome example to the young girls of the town.

Several dowagers eyed her with a good deal of severity, and her particular friends seemed to have agreed amongst themselves to behave towards her as though nothing had happened, which they did so carefully that her spirits sank lower than ever.

But although the dowagers, with one or two exceptions, might agree to look indulgently on her oddities there was one person who gave no sign of having forgiven her.

She saw nothing amiss with Hetty's appearance, only wondered at the cap, for only dowagers and proclaimed spinsters donned this proof of their status in society.

After all, she had nothing better to do at the moment, and conversing with such a homely girl as Miss Rolland might very well make her appear noble and virtuous to the dowagers who had jealously proclaimed her to be conceited.

I do go to routs and parties and there are always kindly dowagers about to chaperone me.