widower

American  

[wid-oh-er] / ˈwɪd oʊ ər /

noun

• widowers
  plural

1. a man who has lost his spouse by death and has not remarried.

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widower British  

/ ˈwɪdəʊə /

noun

1. a man whose wife has died and who has not remarried

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• widowerhood
  noun
• widowered
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• widowers
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of widower

1325–75; late Middle English ( see widow, -er ¹); replacing widow (now dial.), Old English wydewa

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Explanation

If your grandmother has died, you can call your grandfather a widower, or a man whose wife is no longer living. When a man loses his wife, he becomes a widower. The equivalent name for a woman whose husband dies is a widow. In many cases, a man is only referred to as a widower if he has not remarried. Both a widow and a widower are described as being widowed. The feminine form of this word came first, from the Old English widewe. The Indo-European root means "be empty," which perfectly describes the grief that many recent widowers feel.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

widower widowers

The serene Drew household consists of Hannah the cook and Nancy’s widower father, Carson, who works too hard to meet a prospective stepmother.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026

But rather than remain a widow or widower, they remarry.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

In November, a Chicago jury awarded $28.45 million to the widower of Shikha Garg of New Delhi, who died in the Ethiopian crash.

From Barron's ● May 4, 2026

He’s also a widower who lost his wife not to some boring disease but in a way that only a real spitfire would go, by flipping her ATV.

From Salon ● Mar. 23, 2026

Two days later I had my first visitor from outside the family—Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan and the widower of Benazir Bhutto.

From "Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World" by Malala Yousafzai

Thousands of widows and widowers have been short-changed of their Social Security payments as a result of blunders by the Social Security Administration, a government watchdog has revealed.

From MarketWatch ● May 1, 2026

A lot of those old trusts, notably A/B trusts, have rigid language limiting how widows and widowers can control family money after their spouse died.

From Barron's ● Feb. 28, 2026

Widows and widowers talk about the pain of the "firsts" without their late partner - anniversaries, birthdays, major life events.

From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2025

Widows and widowers miss spouses who died during the height of the pandemic.

From Salon ● Apr. 2, 2024

Some are widows or widowers, others are people with relatives or children who have gone missing.

From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy

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