Etymology of With/Widow

WITH (prep.)

Original meaning in direct opposition to modern definition. From Old English—“against,” Proto-German—“against.” Old Saxon—“against,” Old Norse—“against,” Sanskrit—“apart, further, farther.”

Definition shifted to its current form in Middle English, as with ultimately replaced Old English mid. Some traces of original usage of mid as “with” can still be found in words such as midwife (“with wife”). Traces of original antagonistic definition can be found in words such as withhold, withdraw, withstand. (Compare to: WIDOW)

WIDOW (n.)

From Sanskrit—“lonely, solitary.” From the Latin viduus, meaning bereft or void. From root *uidh- “to separate, divide.” (See also: WITH.)

Definition as “woman separated from or abandoned by her husband” originally from mid-fifteenth century, but usually used derogatorily as grass widow—“mistress, or a woman who pretends to have been married to an already married man. An unmarried woman with child.” (Perhaps the “grass” has a connection to the expression “give a grass gown,” which is similar to the modern expression “a roll in the hay.”)

Sentences using WIDOW and WITH:

• “Like all things midwifed, the widow enters the world alone.”
• “The others may withdraw, but the widow must withstand.”
• “At a widow’s peak, the widow may finally speak: he was the first, therefore I loved him. He treated me timidly, like a vase. A kind of love.”
• “There is no escaping that things lead to other things, that we are buckets holding water we didn’t scoop. To go forward is to go back. Everything comes with a legacy, even silicon. Even I come from somewhere, from someones.”