queen dowager
- noun
- /kwin ˈdaʊədʒər/
- Formal
:
reina viuda
- As the queen dowager, she retained her influence and status within the court.
Examples
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The queen dowager attended the royal ceremony to honor her late husband.
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Vasi dedicated two volumes of his Magnificenze di Roma to women, namely Maria Amalia of Saxony and Isabella Farnese, queen dowager of Spain.
Academic text (1995) -
After the king's death, the queen dowager took on important duties to support the kingdom.
Synonyms
12
9.1
An elderly woman who keeps a title or property after her husband dies
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines 'queen' (a female monarch or king's consort) with 'dowager' (a widow of inherited or retained status), so a learner who knows both constituent words can infer it means a queen who is a widow. This is a straightforward compositional noun–noun structure with clear parallels in other languages, making the meaning immediately derivable.
Etymology
The noun queen dowager names a queen who is a 'widow' of a king but keeps her rank and often stays at court. The word dowager comes from the old word 'dower', the part of a husband's property given to his wife after his death, so the image helps explain why a queen dowager is a king's widow who still has a title and sometimes real influence.