a. Also 6 widual. [ad. late L. viduāl-is, f. vidua widow. So OF. vidual, Sp. vidual, It. viduale.] Of or belonging to, befitting, a widow or widowhood; widowed.
1550. Bale, Apol., 37. The estate of widual clennesse is than most fytt, whan [etc.].
1598. Florio, Vedouile, viduall, widow-like.
1624. Heywood, Gunaik., VI. 282. Others there bee that have kept a viduall chastitie even in wedlocke.
1647. Trapp, Comm. 1 Tim. v. 12. ‘Cast off their first faith’: Not that of their baptisme … but their viduall promised chastity and service to the Saints.
1710. Norris, Chr. Prud., iii. 106. One may as well say, Virginal, or Conjugal, or Vidual Prudence as any of these.
1752. Richardson, Lett., in Mrs. Barbauld, Life (1804), III. 192. Shall we show Harriet, alter a departure glorious to the hero, in her vidual glory?
1876. World, V. 12. She too retains still a deeply vidual costume.
1897. F. Thompson, New Poems, 34. She … Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. Ibid., 44. No more shall you sit sole and vidual.
Hence Vidually adv.
1818. J. Brown, Psyche, 93. If marriage solace she prefers Before a solitary pillow, Or wearing vidually the willow.
