The state or the period of being a widow — that is, of having lost your husband (or wife) and not having married again. It is not the event and not the person; it is the condition, and the stretch of time it lasts. You can say 'in her widowhood she moved back to her hometown', where it works almost like a date range, or 'widowhood is hard on old people', where it is more like a situation. The word is formal and a little literary — you meet it in books, sociology articles, and church language much more than in conversation. In everyday speech people say 'after her husband died' instead. Strictly, dictionaries let it cover men too, and there is a separate word 'widowerhood' for men only, but that word is rare and slightly awkward, so 'widowhood' does most of the work for both. Even so, most readers picture a woman when they hear it.

守寡（的狀態或期間）；泛稱喪偶的處境