A dowager is a widow holding a title from her late husband. The dowager duchess, the dowager empress, a dowager's house.
The word marks a widow whose son or heir now holds the title, so a dowager duchess is the previous duchess and there is a current one somewhere. The dower house on an estate was where she moved when the heir took the main house.
1noundowagerA widow holding a title from her late husband.
“The elderly dowager still lived in the castle, while her son ran the estate.”
dowager is a widow.
Middle French douagere comes from douage, a dower, from Latin dos, a dowry.
Latin
dōtō — to endow
Middle French
douagere
English, today
dowager
Built from
From Middle French douagere, douagiere, from douage (“dower”), from the verb douer (“to endow”), from Latin dōtō (“to endow”), from dōs (“dowry”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA