3.14.2012

*puts on spectacles and stuff*

I haven't done this for a while, on the odd occasion I actually jot something down here, it's something personal and pointless, but, I used to have this thing, where I posted stuff that was er.. not so personal and pointless. One of them is a word.. you see, there are these words, and every day there is one. It's the word of the day, or as I like to call it..



Today's word is: Dowager

I like this one, it's all quaint and old fashioned and stuff... the meaning..

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 rhapsodized 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.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for dowager

And I'm proud to say, that I kinda already knew this, due to my fondness for classic literature, particularly, the kind that's by and about, (and generally for) ladies.

*adjusts aforementioned spectacles*

2 comments:

moshmangus said...

I didn't knew this word before you came up with it, I love the sound of it and I thank you for adding a new word in my vocabulary.

Michelle said...

no prob.. glad to be of service :)