Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A widow who holds a title or property derived from her deceased husband.
- n. An elderly woman of high social station.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In law, a widow endowed or possessed of a jointure.
- n. A title given to a widow to distinguish her from the wife of her husband's heir bearing the same name: applied particularly to the widows of princes and persons of rank.
Wiktionary
- n. A widow holding property or title derived from her late husband.
- n. Any lady of dignified bearing.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Eng. Law) A widow endowed, or having a jointure; a widow who either enjoys a dower from her deceased husband, or has property of her own brought by her to her husband on marriage, and settled on her after his decease.
- n. A title given in England to a widow, to distinguish her from the wife of her husband's heir bearing the same name; -- chiefly applied to widows of personages of rank.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a widow holding property received from her deceased husband
Etymologies
- This definition is lacking an etymology or has an incomplete etymology. You can help Wiktionary by giving it a proper etymology. (Wiktionary)
- Obsolete French douagière, from douage, dower, from douer, to endow, from Latin dōtāre, from dōs, dōt-, dowry; see dō- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I guess a dowager is actually always a woman who inherits property from her dead husband.”
Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings: Today's Vocabulary Lesson.
“Now the maid had never heard the word dowager in her life, but thought she would make a shot for it, so when his reverence asked if Mrs. MacCarthy was at home, she blurted out: --”
“It distinguished the dowager Mrs. Smith from the wife of her eldest son; today the word dowager, imitating the English usage, is frequently employed in fashionable society.”
“Now the maid had never heard the word dowager in her life, but thought she would make a shot for it, so when his reverence asked if Mrs. MacCarthy was at home, she blurted out: ” 'No, sir, but the badger is.”
“Mrs. Booker T. Washington, but they were women that were more like what you would call the dowager or the ladylike type of thing.”
“A dowager is a woman who doesn't dance: and her male attendant is -- what is he?”
“I fully admit that I just now had to look up the word "dowager" in the dictionary, and he's sort of correct.”
Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings: Today's Vocabulary Lesson.
“It was quite suitable for a "dowager" of Miss Allen's age and type, but rather oppressive and overpowering for a girl of eighteen, though it fitted my slender figure well enough, Miss Allen being of a spinster-like thinness.”
“These suspicions were increased when that lady, now known as the dowager empress, designated her four-year-old nephew, the son of her sister and Hsien-feng’s brother, heir to the throne.”
“They did so; but when the "dowager" opened the door at their knock, they hardly knew her.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dowager’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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-ager
Any word ending in -ager. And because I'm feeling generous tonight, I'll even let in words ending in -adger.
voyager, teenager, wager, pager, manager, dowager, badger, cadger, lager, rager, mumager, tanager and 14 more...
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Words to Know
Words that will hopefully help for the sat.
capricious, bombastic, decorous, loquacious, ossified, jingoism, mitigated, venerable, supercilious, pugnacious, jubilant, Perfidy and 17 more...
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SAT Master Vocab List
Words I have come across that I don't know the meaning of!
rumination, contrition, extemporize, effusion, exult, vexed, sumptuous, punitive, brethren, harridan, macabre, acrid and 123 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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i heart words
autarkic, cline, aver, limn, gossamer, ochre, fulminate, twee, augur, mollify, maw, ecumenical and 113 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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Niels's Words
bien-pensant, pro re nata, zeitgeist, naïve, quod erat demonst..., dramastic, mélange, amanuensis, heuristic, hermeneutic, gist, gumption and 157 more...
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words found to be generally pleasing
alabaster, mahogany, camphor, coalesce, spire, portmanteau, gadabout, palaver, dolor, dour, dun, luminesce and 610 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Jane Eyre
abigail, sanguine, chancel, bourne, peremptorily, parley, unwonted, fagging, convolvuli, tarry, insuperable, execrations and 190 more...
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