Word.ws English Dictionary

widowmaker

widowmaker is the alternative form 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.

Forms of widowmaker

pluralwidowmakers

Questions about widowmaker

What is widowmaker the alternative form of?
Widowmaker is the alternative form of widow-maker.

Words near widowmaker in the dictionary

  1. widowing
  2. widowish
  3. widowity
  4. widowlike
  5. widowly
  6. widowmaker
  7. widowmakers
  8. widowman
  9. widowmen
  10. widows
  11. widows bewitched

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: widowmaker (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: “widowmaker.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/widowmaker. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.