subs. (old).—1. An unmarried mother; a deserted mistress. See BARRACK-HACK and TART.
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. Widow’s weeds, a GRASS-WIDOW, one that pretends to have been married, but never was, yet has children.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. Widow’s weeds; a GRASS-WIDOW; a discarded mistress.
2. (colloquial).—A married woman temporarily separated from her husband.
[The usually accepted derivation that grass = Fr., grâce is doubtful. Hall (says J. C. Atkinson, in Glossary of Cleveland Words) gives as the definition of this word ‘an unmarried woman who has had a child’; in Moor’s Suffolk Words and Phrases, GRACE-WIDOW, ‘a woman who has had a child for her cradle ere she has had a husband for her bed’; and corresponding with this is the N. S. or Low Ger., gras-wedewe. Again, Sw. D., gras-anka, or -enka = GRASS-WIDOW, occurs in the same sense as with us: ‘a low, dissolute, unmarried woman living by herself.’ The original meaning of the word seems to have been ‘a woman whose husband is away,’ either travelling or living apart. The people of Belgium call a woman of this description haeck-wedewe, from haecken, to feel strong desire…. It seems probable, therefore, from the etymology, taken in connection with the Clevel. signification, that our word may rather be from the Scand. source than from the German; only with a translation of the word enka into its English equivalent. Dan. D., graesenka, is a female whose betrothed lover (fastman) is dead; nearly equivalent to which is German, strohwittwe, literally straw-widow. See Notes and Queries, 6 S. viii., 268, 414: x. 333, 436, 526; xi. 78, 178.]
ENGLISH SYNONYMS.—Californian widow; widow-bewitched; wife in water colours.
1700. CONGREVE, The Way of the World, Act iii. Sc. 18. Fain. If the worst come to the worst,—I’ll TURN MY WIFE TO GRASS—I have already a deed of settlement of the best part of her estate, which I wheedl’d out of her.
1877. Chambers’s Journal, 12 March, p. 173. Mrs. Brittomart was one of those who never tolerated a bow-wow—a species of animal well known in India—and never went to the hills as a GRASS-WIDOW.
1878. London, A GRASS-WIDOW.
| And so, you see, it comes to pass | |
| That she’s a WIDOW OUT AT GRASS | |
| And happy in her freedom. |
1882. The Saturday Review, 11 Feb. She is a GRASS-WIDOW, her husband is something in some Indian service.
1885. W. BLACK, White Heather, ch. xli. Mrs. Lalor, a GRASS-WIDOW who was kind enough to play chaperon to the young people, but whose effective black eyes had a little trick of roving on their own account.
1889. Daily Telegraph, 12 Feb. She had taken up her residence at a house in Sinclair-road, Kensington, where she passed as a GRASS-WIDOW. She represented that her husband was engaged in mercantile pursuits.
