Word.ws English Dictionary

black widow

black widow noun: any of several species of venomous and potentially deadly spiders, particularly Latrodectus spp.

black widow: any of several species of venomous and potentially deadly spiders, particularly Latrodectus spp
Image: CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

black widow (plural black widows)

  1. Any of several species of venomous and potentially deadly spiders, particularly Latrodectus spp.
    • Looking out at the gloomy silent withered forests, Bond thought that nothing could be living in them except bats and scorpions, horned toads and black widow spiders.1954, Ian Fleming, “The Everglades”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 123
  2. A woman who kills one or more of her lovers.
  3. A female suicide bomber, sometimes one intending to avenge her husband who was killed.

Forms of black widow

pluralblack widows

Words formed from black widow

Questions about black widow

What does black widow mean?
Black widow means any of several species of venomous and potentially deadly spiders, particularly Latrodectus spp.
What part of speech is black widow?
Black widow is a noun.
What is the plural of black widow?
The plural of black widow is black widows.

Words near black widow in the dictionary

  1. black wedding
  2. black weddings
  3. black whale
  4. black whales
  5. black where it counts
  6. black widow
  7. black widow knee slide
  8. black widow knee slides
  9. black widows
  10. black willow
  11. black willows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black widow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-black widow.wav.

Cite this entry: “black widow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_widow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.