Word.ws English Dictionary

surviving spouse

surviving spouse noun: a spouse that outlives the person to whom they are married, thereby obtaining legal rights with respect to the property of the deceased spouse.

Noun

surviving spouse (plural surviving spouses)

  1. A spouse that outlives the person to whom they are married, thereby obtaining legal rights with respect to the property of the deceased spouse.
  2. (US) An unmarried taxpayer whose spouse has been deceased for less than two taxable years, and who provides a home for one or more dependents of the deceased.

Forms of surviving spouse

pluralsurviving spouses

Questions about surviving spouse

What does surviving spouse mean?
Surviving spouse means a spouse that outlives the person to whom they are married, thereby obtaining legal rights with respect to the property of the deceased spouse.
What part of speech is surviving spouse?
Surviving spouse is a noun.
What is the plural of surviving spouse?
The plural of surviving spouse is surviving spouses.

Words near surviving spouse in the dictionary

  1. survives
  2. survivest
  3. surviveth
  4. survivin
  5. surviving
  6. surviving spouse
  7. surviving spouses
  8. survivor
  9. survivor bias
  10. survivor biases
  11. survivor guilt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: surviving spouse (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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Cite this entry: “surviving spouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/surviving_spouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.