Word.ws English Dictionary

merry-widow

merry-widow verb: to swirl around dancing a romantic or flamboyant waltz.

Verb

merry-widow (third-person singular simple present merry-widows, present participle merry-widowing, simple past and past participle merry-widowed)

  1. (obsolete) To swirl around dancing a romantic or flamboyant waltz.
    • Dan produced his divining rod - a piece of forked willow tree - and taking a firm grip of it with both hands, went off ‘merry-widowing’ round Skinnerlouse’s yard.1911, ‘Steel Rudd’, The Book of Dan, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, published 1970, page 8

Forms of merry-widow

third-person singular presentmerry-widows
present participlemerry-widowing
past participlemerry-widowed
pastmerry-widowed

Origin of merry-widow

From Franz Lehár's popular 1905 operetta The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe); the romantic centerpiece is a sweeping, hypnotic waltz where the two main characters dance together because they are too stubborn to admit their love out loud.

Questions about merry-widow

What does merry-widow mean?
Merry-widow means to swirl around dancing a romantic or flamboyant waltz.
What part of speech is merry-widow?
Merry-widow is a verb.
What is the past tense of merry-widow?
The past tense of merry-widow is merry-widowed.

Words near merry-widow in the dictionary

  1. merry-meetings
  2. merry-thought
  3. merry-thoughts
  4. merry-totter
  5. merry-totters
  6. merry-widow
  7. merry-widowed
  8. merry-widowing
  9. merry-widows
  10. merryandrew
  11. merryandrews

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: merry-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.

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