Dowager

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 14, 2012

dowager \DOU-uh-jer\, noun:

1. An elderly woman of stately dignity, especially one of elevated social position.
2. A woman who holds some title or property from her deceased husband, especially the widow of a king, duke, etc.

adjective:
1. Noting, pertaining to, or characteristic of a dowager:

Deeda Blair rhapsodised about the exquisite atmosphere of La Grenouille and La Caravelle, two of the leading temples of fine French cuisine, where she’d lunch with the dowager philanthropist Mary Lasker or the ubiquitous Nan Kempner in the early 1960s, when her husband, William McCormick Blair Jr., was J.F.K.’s ambassador to Denmark and they’d stop in New York on their way home to Washington.
-- Bob Colacello, "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunched!," Vanity Fair, Feb. 2012

She trusted the dowager, and respected her deeply. But that wasn't the issue. Which world was she living in? For the time being, that was the point.
-- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Dowager stems from the Latin word dotare meaning "to endow." In the middle French, it came to mean "pertaining to a dower," or the gift/payment that a wife's family gives her husband when they are married.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/