Word.ws English Dictionary

widow-makers

widow-makers is the plural of widow-maker.

Meaning of widow-maker

Noun

widow-maker (plural widow-makers)

  1. (idiomatic) Something which or someone who takes a person's life, particularly men; a lethal hazard that affects mostly men or is specific to a primarily male trade.
    • O, it grieves my soul, / That I must draw this metal from my side / To be a widow-maker!c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. The detached or broken limb of a tree, a hazard to those walking underneath.
    Synonyms:
    fool killer
  3. (informal) An occlusion of the left coronary artery or its anterior interventricular branch, which is likely to cause a fatal heart attack.
  4. (slang) The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Questions about widow-makers

What is widow-makers the plural of?
Widow-makers is the plural of widow-maker.

Words near widow-makers in the dictionary

  1. widow's walks
  2. widow's weeds
  3. widow-hunter
  4. widow-hunters
  5. widow-maker
  6. widow-makers
  7. widow-wail
  8. widowbird
  9. widowbirds
  10. widowdom
  11. widowed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: widow-makers (page history and authors); widow-maker (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: “widow-makers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/widow-makers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.