grass widow

American  

noun

1. a woman who is separated, divorced, or lives apart from her husband.

2. a woman whose husband is away from home frequently or for a long time, as on business or to pursue a sport or hobby.

3. Archaic.

   1. a discarded mistress.

   2. a woman who has borne an illegitimate child.

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grass widow British  

noun

1. a woman divorced, separated, or living away from her spouse

2. a woman whose spouse is regularly away for short periods

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grass widow Idioms  

1. A woman who is separated from her husband, either by divorce or temporary absence. For example, She's a grass widow these days, with Herb traveling to golf tournaments all over the country. The expression dates from the 16th century, when it referred to the mother of an illegitimate child, grass presumably alluding to the open-air setting of the child's conception.

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Other Word Forms

• grasswidowhood
  noun

Etymology

Origin of grass widow

1520–30; the first element perhaps originally alluding to a bed of grass, hay, or the like; compare Dutch grasweduwe, German Strohwittwe literally, straw-widow

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

grass widow

The conservancy maintains miles of pathways inside the ranch and at Cowiche Canyon Uplands, with shrub-steppe habitat zones for stunning spring-summer wildflower shows of prairie star flower, grass widow and other ornaments.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 8, 2023

Her husband, a failed real estate developer, walks out, leaving Mildred a grass widow with no income besides the money she makes baking pies for neighbors.

From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2011

But lucky theatergoers have been persuaded, at one time or another, that she was an intense, good-looking young schoolteacher, a tippling grass widow, and a well-girdled, wisecracking career girl.

From Time Magazine Archive

Dolly, who had guilelessly fancied herself No. 3, was left, according to the court, still a lonely grass widow, never legally married to Astor and apparently powerless to take anything out of his heritage.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Never a merrier—as bouncing a grass widow as ever there was in sweet 'Tyrone among the bushes.'"

From Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)