Widow
A widow is a woman whose spouse or significant other has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse or significant other has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed. The treatment of widows around the world varies, but unequal benefits and treatment generally received by widows versus widowers globally has spurred an interest in the issue by human rights activists.
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Famous quotes containing the word widow:
“. . . A widow bird sat mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“A widow has two duties of a contradictory nature—she is a mother, and she ought to exert a father’s power.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)