So you are saying, Kathy, that the word 'widow' can refer to both men and women.
Actually, no, I wasn't saying that at all, but I guess I didn't explain myself very well.
The terms widow and widower are as you believe, Ann. A woman whose husband has died is a widow, a man whose wife has died is a widower. A widow is always female, a widower is always male. That's using those words as nouns. If you want to use widow as an adjective - e.g. the widowed Lois - you would also use the same word for Clark - the widowed Clark. Never the "widowered Clark". English is such a straight-forward language, don't you think?
But what I was getting at is that it seems that while the word "widow" is very commonplace, far fewer people will use the word widower - when talking about a man the sentence is often phrased differently so that the word widower is NOT used. So that it would be much more common for me to see a reference to
Clark's widow, Lois than to see
Lois' widower, Clark, even though both phrases are grammatically correct. I think this is a fair statement for North American usage of the words - I can't speak for other parts of the world.
Obviously that doesn't mean that there aren't widowers out there, but that they will generally not be referred to as such. Is that clearer?
And if that is the case, then the reason why 'widow' gets so many more hits than 'widower' could be mostly because widowed women are considered more interesting than widowed men.
I suppose this is a possible interpretation, but I personally think it's just that the word "widower" is not as commonly used. Maybe you won't feel that this helps prove my point, but I asked my son what a woman was called whose husband had died, and he immediately answered "widow". When I asked him the reverse, he thought for a moment and then answered "widower?" with some hesitation. Maybe he thought it was a trick question on my part
, but he obviously did not feel as confident in his response as he had with my first question.
Kathy
