widow
- widower
‘widow’
You say that a woman is a widow when her husband has died and she has not married again.
I had been a widow for five years.
When a man has died, you can refer to his wife as his widow.
His property had been left to his widow.
He visited the widow of an old school friend.
‘widower’
You say that a man is a widower when his wife has died and he has not married again.
He's a widower in his late forties.
When a woman has died, you can refer to her husband as her widower.
Ten years later her widower remarried.
The ceremony was attended by the widower of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields.