How to Use dowager in a Sentence

dowager

noun
  • The estate is owned by a wealthy dowager.
  • The guests at the wedding—the dowager, the twins, a procession.
    — Sarah Mower, Vogue, 6 Oct. 2020
  • Even Maggie Smith's dowager countess would have good things to say about them.
    — Julie Hinds, Detroit Free Press, 22 Jan. 2022
  • The podcast, which at five years old is practically a dowager of the medium, is not interested in breaking tabloid news.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 31 May 2021
  • His dowager countess, played with the driest of wit by Maggie Smith, was unforgettable.
    — Matthew Gilbert, BostonGlobe.com, 24 Oct. 2022
  • Another passenger, the dowager Lady Brabourne, died the next day.
    — Victoria Murphy, Town & Country, 9 Apr. 2021
  • Given the simple nature of the dowager queen’s later years, the fact that her funeral was a modest event isn’t wholly surprising.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Mar. 2015
  • Weaver will co-star as his employer, a wealthy dowager, who demands that Edgerton’s character take on her wayward and troubled great-niece as a new apprentice.
    — Brent Lang, Variety, 1 Sep. 2021
  • Meanwhile, in Paris, a fling from the dowager countess’s youth raises questions about the Crawley’s family history.
    — Melissa Giannini, ELLE, 18 May 2022
  • Until February 1952, the dowager queen outranked her granddaughter.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 Feb. 2022
  • After her son died in 1875, the dowager empress consolidated power by breaking with succession tradition to adopt her three-year-old nephew, who was also too young to rule.
    — Lila Thulin, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Feb. 2020
  • Willetta Street is an oasis populated by affluent hipsters, longtime legacy residents and the occupants of a large, pink dowager apartment building.
    — Michael Kiefer, azcentral, 7 Apr. 2018
  • Who would have thought musty old Fenway Park, the 105-year-old dowager of the Back Bay, would be a battleground for technological espionage?
    — Tyler Kepner, New York Times, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Speculation runs rampant as to the nature and extent of this secret relationship, and whether the dowager countess’s son Robert (Hugh Bonneville) might really be — quelle horreur!
    — Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post, 18 May 2022
  • Its owner, by the time Caroline and Mustafa came along, was a professor of archaeology her family knew from Izmir who was looking for a buyer to take up the crumbling dowager of a property and bring it back to life.
    — Carl Swanson, Town & Country, 28 Nov. 2022
  • Smith has portrayed the dowager countess, Violet Crawley, a character who has become best known for her devastating zingers and obsession with maintaining tradition at Downton.
    — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 20 May 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dowager.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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