A grass widower is one who is for the time being without his wife. “A grass widow” is an ambiguous term. In the sixteenth century it had an opprobrious meaning. Mr. George Hempl of Ann Arbor, in April, 1893, examined a hundred students as to the use of the phrase. Nineteen understood it to mean a woman divorced; to thirty-seven it signified a woman divorced or informally separated from her husband, he being usually the deserting party; forty-two were familiar with the term only in reference to a woman who had been deserted by her husband, or had left him, usually the former. The 1854 example presents a new difficulty.
1528. For then had wyuys ben in his time lytel better than grasse wydowes be now.—More’s ‘Dyaloge.’ (N.E.D.)
1582. Marie the daughter of Elizabeth London graswidow.—Suffolk Register, January. (N.E.D.)
1854. [She was] arrayed—as who ever saw a veritable grass-widow not arrayed, in a memorable suit of black.—Yale Lit. Mag., xx. 20–1 (Oct.).
1862.
| How she whirls like a fire-work in rapture away, | |
| When you take her a ‘rocket-time’ ride in the sleigh; | |
| How she loves to be wrapped like a baby complete, | |
| And begs you to carefully shawl up her feet. | |
| O pshaw! she ’d be glad to go ride on a hearse, | |
| With a six-footer big-whiskered chap for her nurse; | |
| And would waltz with Old NICK—if she found him polite— | |
| The pretty grass-widow who lives on our flight. | |
Fourth verse of ‘Ye Grass-Widow’: Knick. Mag., lix. 315 (March). |
1862. David is a bachelor again, or rather a “grass-widower.” We refer to D. H. M., Esq., whose estimable young wife left him by this day’s coach to spend the summer at her old home in the Empire State.—Rocky Mountain News, Denver, June 14.
1870. Her life … devoted to grass-widowhood.—The Congregationalist, Jan. 6 (Bartlett).
*** See also The Nation, N.Y. (1893), lvi. 215, 235, 253; and Notes and Queries, Series 6, passim.
