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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
widowhood
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A confidant and social support buffers a woman against the losses of retirement, widowhood, moves, and deaths.
▪ Her widowhood sat lightly on her shoulders, and from what Peggy gathered from her she had a favourite pub.
▪ Monied widowhood is their only nirvana.
▪ Often the horror and humility of her widowhood would drive a young widow to follow her husband on his burning pyre.
▪ The reason: older persons tend to form one-person households both by preference and owing to widowhood.
▪ The unthinking equation of widowhood for women with retirement for men has been challenged.
▪ The young man accepts each rationalization given by Lady Susan for her apparently scandalous behavior in the short months of her widowhood.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Widowhood

Widowhood \Wid"ow*hood\, n.

  1. The state of being a widow; the time during which a woman is widow; also, rarely, the state of being a widower.

    Johnson clung to her memory during a widowhood of more than thirty years.
    --Leslie Stephen.

  2. Estate settled on a widow. [Obs.] ``I 'll assure her of her widowhood . . . in all my lands.''
    --Shak.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
widowhood

c.1200, from widow (n.) + -hood. Modifying or replacing Old English wuduwanhad "state of a woman who has no husband."

Wiktionary
widowhood

n. The state or period of being a widow or widower

WordNet
widowhood
  1. n. the time of a woman's life when she is a widow

  2. the state of being a widow who has not remarried

Usage examples of "widowhood".

Pauline allowed me to escort her as far as Calais, and we started on the 10th of August, only stopping at Dover to embark the carriage on the packet, and four hours afterwards we disembarked at Calais, and Pauline, considering her widowhood had begun, begged me to sleep in another room.

These natural causes of widowhood, as they may be called, are greatly aggravated by the destructive influence of alcohol upon fatherhood, as will be shown in the chapter dealing with alcohol and womanhood.

No bananas yet, so I called Glory Geis, who chortled happy welcome, and I fenderfought my way to the lake-shore fireside, where once again in the blue jump suit the graceful ragamuffin lady in her second widowhood plied me with a potion which sharpened the taste buds for what the kitchen would provide.

Mrs Spandrel was a warm-hearted woman, who had married for love and been rewarded with five children, only one of whom had lived beyond the cradle, early widowhood and greater poverty than she had ever imagined descending into.

I, Isabella Monboddo, sometime wife of Henry Monboddo, have in my widowhood given, granted, and by this my present charter confirmed, to Alethea Greatorex, Lady Marchamont of Pontifex Hall, Dorsetshire, relict of Henry Greatorex, Baron Marchamont, all lands and tenements, meadows, grazing lands and pasture, with their hedges, banks and ditches, and with all their profits and appurtenances, which I have in Wembish Park, Huntingdonshire .

Pauline allowed me to escort her as far as Calais, and we started on the 10th of August, only stopping at Dover to embark the carriage on the packet, and four hours afterwards we disembarked at Calais, and Pauline, considering her widowhood had begun, begged me to sleep in another room.

And after her came an old woman in ragged robes, crying and howling likewise : and they brought with them the Olive boughs wherewith the three slaine bodies were covered on the Beere, and cried out in this manner : O right Judges, we pray by the justice and humanity which is in you, to have mercy upon these slaine persons, and succour our Widowhood and losse of our deare husbands, and especially this poore infant, who is now an Orphan, and deprived of all good fortune : and execute your justice by order and law, upon the bloud of this Theefe, who is the occasion of all our sorrowes.

Her anxiety state was prompting a steady release of adrenalin, combating the alcohol: the psyche was relaxed enough to let her forget her widowhood for the first time but her physical reactions were still good enough to drive this thing through the eye of a needle.

She dialled or stepmother's number, hoping that for once Mary would be k, Mary was fighting a characteristically tough battle against the Oneliness and grief of her widowhood.

Sear scoffed: his wife's infirmities, her imminent widowhood, her beginning menopause -- not to mention the parlous state of the University, ever worsening, and the general absurdity of existence.

All a man such as that can offer is early widowhood and a broken heart as he traipses from bed to bed, ever careless of a woman's feelings.