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dowager

/ˈdaʊəd͡ʒɚ/noun

dowager is a noun meaning “A widow holding property or title derived from her late husband” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-O-W-A-G-E-R and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 1 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of dowager is dowagers.

What does dowager mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A widow holding property or title derived from her late husband.

    A reclusive dowager owned the pastures across the river, and her farmhands ran beef cattle on them.

  2. 2

    The widow of the holder of a title (usually a member of the peerage or a baronet); used in combination with the title she held during her husband's lifetime.

    the Earl and Countess of Whiteacre, and the Earl's mother, the dowager Countess of Whiteacre

  3. 3

    Any lady of dignified bearing, especially an older one.

    A stately dowager entered the ballroom, and all eyes were upon her.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce dowager?

  • UK /ˈdaʊədʒə/
  • US /ˈdaʊəd͡ʒɚ/

Dowager has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-dowager.wav, En-us-dowager.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-WPsmkrpig-Dowager.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of dowager

  • dowagers plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is dowager?

Dowager appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 34,912th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Dowager in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdouairière (widow), dame (lady of dignified bearing)
GermanWitwe von Stand (widow), Matrone (lady of dignified bearing)
Spanishviuda (widow), dama (lady of dignified bearing)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does dowager come from?

From Middle French douagere, douagiere, from douage (“dower”), from the verb douer (“to endow”), from Latin dōtō (“to endow”), from dōs (“dowry”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).