Widowed

ppl. a. [f. WIDOW sb.¹ or ² or v. + -ED.]

  1.  Made or become a widow (or widower); bereaved of one’s husband (or wife). Also of an animal, esp. a bird: Bereaved of its mate.

1606.  Warner, Alb. Eng., XIV. lxxxvi. 355. A pitious Storie of King Eugens widowed wife.

a. 1718.  Prior, Solomon, III. 193. A widow’d Daughter.

1730–46.  Thomson, Autumn, 974. Some widowed songster pours his plaint.

1813.  Scott, Trierm., I. i. Constant and true as the widow’d dove. Ibid. (1823), Quentin D., Introd. He was a widowed husband and childless father.

1855.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xvii. IV. 5. He was a child at his widowed mother’s knee.

1885.  Mistletoe Bough, 28/1. An acquaintance of mine—a twice widowed wife.

1893.  Tout, Edw. I., xi. (1896), 182. There was … talk of a marriage between the widowed Edward and the French king’s sister.

  b.  transf.

c. 1600.  Shaks., Sonn., xcvii. 8. The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase … Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease.

1627.  May, Lucan, V. 928. Sleepelesse she spent in her now widow’d bed … the night that followed.

1634.  Heywood, Maidendh. well lost, I. i. What is’t to me? If being a Bride, you haue a widdowed fortune.

1725.  Pope, Odyss., I. 455. Your widow’d hours,… with female toil And various labours of the loom, beguile.

1768.  C. Shaw, Monody, xiv. (1769), 12. How shall I find repose on a sad widow’d bed?

1780.  Cowper, Doves, 36. Denied th’ endearments of thine eye, This widow’d heart would break.

1825.  T. Hook, Sayings, Ser. II. Passion & Princ., iii. For … six and twenty years had the veteran lover … solaced himself in widowed singleness.

1828.  P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales (ed. 3), II. 279. She tripped out of doors to solace her widowed heart with the joys of a second husband.

1894.  Dyan, Man’s Keeping, xviii. He could only hold the poor widowed hand tenderly in his while he told her the tiny details of those last few days.

  2.  fig. Deprived of a partner, friend, companion, or mate; bereaved; hence, deserted, desolate, solitary.

1633.  P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., II. iv. Straight from the ashes … A new-born Phœnix flies, & widow’d place resumes.

1687.  Norris, Coll. Misc., 17. No Second Friendship can be found To match my mourning Widow’d Love.

a. 1763.  Shenstone, Elegies, viii. 33. From Twitnam’s widow’d bow’r.

1763.  Churchill, Proph. Famine, 498. What if we seiz’d, like a destroying flood, Their widow’d plains.

1820.  Shelley, Naples, 108. Widowed Genoa wan By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs.

1850.  Tennyson, In Mem., lxxxv. 113. My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest Quite on the love of what is gone.

1908.  E. V. Lucas, Over Bemerton’s, x. He sees far more with his widowed orb than the ordinary observer does with two.

  b.  Of an elm: Not ‘mated’ with a vine; conversely of the vine; also of a branch. (After L. ulmus aud vitis vidua, ramus viduus.)

1743.  Francis, trans. Hor., Odes, IV. v. 44. The hind Weds to the widow’d elm his vine.

1756.  Mason, Ode to Indep., vii. When pining Care,… sees thee, like the weak, and widow’s Vine, Winding thy blasted tendrills o’er the plain.

1763.  Mills, Pract. Husb., IV. 357. No shoots should be suffered to grow out of the firm wood, unless they are wanted in order to marry them to a widowed branch.