widowmaker
Americannoun
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anything likely to cause sudden death, especially a danger in a male-dominated profession.
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Medicine/Medical. the anterior interventricular branch of the left coronary artery, or a blockage of it.
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a loose or broken tree limb that can easily fall on someone below and kill them.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Nevertheless, betting against Japanese sovereign debt-- a trade famously known as a widow-maker -- has never been easy, given the BOJ's massive balance sheet and steely resolve to defend its yield curve control settings.
From Reuters • Sep. 21, 2022
Who remembers reading about the last time anyone got busted for even “safe and sane” fireworks in L.A., let alone those lawless widow-maker explosives?
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 23, 2021
Harper: I had a genetic issue that gave me a widow-maker and I think that what I can tell people, from what I've learned, is you need to know your health from the inside out.
From Fox News • Mar. 31, 2020
A widow-maker falls on you – not the sort of hanging limb you’d normally get in the woods dangling from a tree that might blow down in the wind.
From Salon • Feb. 23, 2013
And the nurse said, ‘Oh yeah, you were blocked in your widow-maker.’
From New York Times • Dec. 6, 2010
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
