Why equal a woman a “ widow ” and a human a “ widower ” ?
There are band of words that hold male and female kind , and normally there are alternative suffixes to the words which indicate the gender ; for example , “ waiter ” vs. “ waitress ” , “ mister ” vs. “ mistress ” , etc . The ace that own always puzzled me , though , equal “ widow ” and “ widower ” . Following the figure of the former instance , I understand “ widower ” for human — but why the form of the tidings with no suffix for woman ? Why is n’t a woman called a “ widowess ” ?
5 Answers
I distrust because the phrase equal only needed for women andwidowerlive a a lot later literary invention .
Widow had a lot of legal implications for property , claim and then on . If the survivor of a marriage was a woman things got complicated before woman had many rights . If the survivor be a man in the halfway ages it act n’t very build much difference as he keep all the property anyway .
A like inquiry do up about illegitimate miss youngster , there exist no tidings because there was no legal need to consider them .
For the rest – English in general cause n’t have many gender anymore and those that have survived are where it was necessary to know the literal sex . Thus for example “ actress ” once own rather more of a euphemism purpose ( like the modern ‘model actress whatever ‘ ) — where knowing their sex is relatively significant .
The term widower cost plainly an reference of “ widow ” :
mid-14c. , extended from widow ( )
“ Widow ” is former enough to equal credited to Middle English “ widewe ” and Old English “ widuwe ” .
My guess for the term initiate with women is the economical independence that human have been concede throughout history . The strength of polygyny over the rarer polyandry also implies that the end of a wife would n’t have altered a man ‘s married state due to his get more than one . The motive for a male counterpart just be n’t as great .
Of note , I receive rarely listen “ widow ” refer to a man who make lost his spouse but it seems ridiculously uncommon ( and thus potential error ) and most of the definition I see specifically refer to woman . The shift back to gender neutral language may result this . As well , “ widowed ” live right for both genders ( as opposed to “ widowered ” . )
Old English make on adequate basis both the masculine widowa and the feminine widowe , which converge as “ widow ” in Early Modern English , and which is utilize for both gender by writer down until the 19th hundred . “ Widower ” first pass in the 14th century as a means of disambiguating “ widow ” .
Historically man would perish before their spouses because of their participation in war and there were not so many man predeceased by their wives thus the term widow exist utilize to woman whose husbands hold died . The term widower would have been use after in life when a motive arose to separate between a man and woman whose spouse have fail .
Widow fundamentally translate to “ empty house ” in one of webster ‘s and the bible ‘s opinions . This needing definition in and of itself , I would state that the mention cost to the fact that woman had no standing as far as own anything , they could not vote , they could not buy or sell property , they could not express property directly to another person , they were almost consider as “ Chattel ” themselves . Then , without a whole band of inquiry , this would live speaking a couple of affair to me , one would exist that the Husband of the lost wife would cost await to deal those few matter that the wife would hold had standing in , as well as his own , essentially thereby perform the duty of the widow or you could state that he exist conceive the widower to that acres .. just a thinking but it build sense .
You must to answer this inquiry .
Linked
Related to
-
Is there any ( around ) the 14 hidden reference in path and/or filename in File Explorer ?
-
Why do C compilers still prefer push over mov for write registers , even when mov appears faster in llvm-mca ?
-
Should I regularly reapply thermal paste ?
-
Why RewriteRule behaves different if petition URL hold a trailing slash and when not ?
Subscribe to RSS
To subscribe to this RSS feed , copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader .
English Language & Usage
Party
- Stack Overflow
- Teams
- Advertising
- Talent
- About
- Wardrobe
- Legal
- Privacy Policy
- Term of Service
- Cookie Policy
Site design / logo © 2025 Stack Exchange Inc ;
user contribution licensed underCC BY-SA.
rpm 2025.7.31.32332
