英语词汇grass widow的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

grass widow. The old story that this synonym for a divorcée derives from veuve de grace, “a divorcée or widow by courtesy or grace of the Pope,” has no basis in fact—for one thing, grace widow is nowhere recorded in English. Just as unlikely is the theory that the phrase originated with the custom of British of- ficers in India sending their wives on vacation to the cool grassy hills during intensely hot summers, where, separated from their husbands, they were humorously referred to as grass wid- ows. There is also a yarn that “forty-niners” in America “put their wives out to grass,” boarding them with neighbors until they returned from prospecting. The most plausible explanation of this old English expression, which dates back to at least the early 16th century, is that it formerly meant an unmarried mother and just changed in meaning over the years. “Grass” probably referred to the grass in which the grass widow’s child might have been begotten, outside of the proper marriage bed, and “widow” to the woman’s unmarried state. We find the same parallel in many languages, including our current slang a roll in the hay; the German Strohwiteve, “straw widow”; and the Mid- dle Low German graswedeue, an obsolete word for a woman with an illegitimate child. One joke has it that a grass widow is a forlorn middle-class matron whose husband spends all his spare time playing golf.

词汇	grass widow
词源	grass widow. The old story that this synonym for a divorcée derives from veuve de grace, “a divorcée or widow by courtesy or grace of the Pope,” has no basis in fact—for one thing, grace widow is nowhere recorded in English. Just as unlikely is the theory that the phrase originated with the custom of British of- ficers in India sending their wives on vacation to the cool grassy hills during intensely hot summers, where, separated from their husbands, they were humorously referred to as grass wid- ows. There is also a yarn that “forty-niners” in America “put their wives out to grass,” boarding them with neighbors until they returned from prospecting. The most plausible explanation of this old English expression, which dates back to at least the early 16th century, is that it formerly meant an unmarried mother and just changed in meaning over the years. “Grass” probably referred to the grass in which the grass widow’s child might have been begotten, outside of the proper marriage bed, and “widow” to the woman’s unmarried state. We find the same parallel in many languages, including our current slang a roll in the hay; the German Strohwiteve, “straw widow”; and the Mid- dle Low German graswedeue, an obsolete word for a woman with an illegitimate child. One joke has it that a grass widow is a forlorn middle-class matron whose husband spends all his spare time playing golf.
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