widows

1. a woman who has lost her spouse by death and has not married again.
2. a last word or short last line of a paragraph falling at the top of a page or column and considered undesirable.
3. a widowbird.

1. become a widow or widower; lose one's spouse through death.

   he was recently widowed

   she had to care for her widowed mother

Old English widewe, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘be empty’; compare with Sanskrit vidh ‘be destitute’, Latin viduus ‘bereft, widowed’, and Greek ēitheos ‘unmarried man’.