grass widower
- noun
- Informal
:
viudo de hierba
- Feeling like a grass widower, he dined alone every night during his wife's trip abroad.
Examples
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In Victorian novels, the term grass widower was sometimes used for men whose wives were away for extended periods.
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After his divorce, Tom often joked that he was a grass widower rather than truly single.
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John is a grass widower since his wife moved to Paris.
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Many grass widowers find it hard to cope with loneliness.
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Feeling like a grass widower, he dined alone every night while his wife was on vacation.
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After his divorce, Tom often joked that he was a grass widower, enjoying his newfound freedom.
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John has felt like a grass widower ever since his wife took a job in another city.
Synonyms
4
1.6
A man who is no longer married because the court ended his marriage
A man whose wife often plays golf and leaves him alone
Surface Forms
Morphology
grass + widower
The literal meanings of 'grass' (a plant) and 'widower' (a man whose wife has died) do not combine to yield 'a man separated or whose wife is temporarily away'; the phrase depends on an idiomatic/historical formation (by analogy with 'grass widow') rather than transparent composition. This sense is rare and culture-specific and even contradicts the literal sense of 'widower', so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would not reliably infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The noun grass widower may come from the older phrase grass widow, where grass suggested living away in the fields and widow meant someone left alone. So a grass widower is a man who feels like a 'widower' because his wife is 'temporarily away' or they are 'separated'.