遗孀 = 寡妇 = Widow

[Koneko]

Can anyone please tell me how to differentiate 遗孀 and 寡妇 ?

Do they both mean the same?

Thanks!

[semantic nuance]

widow--遺孀, or 寡婦. They mean the same thing. But, they will be used differently sometimes in Chinese.

widower--鰥夫(guan1fu1).

Another word for widow is 未亡人 (wei4wang2ren2) . It literally means "not yet die person"--one's spouse hasn't been dead yet; one's spouse who has still been alive.

Ex: 她的先生突然死去, 頓時之間, 她變成了寡婦. 她的先生沒有留下多少財產給他的遺孀(未亡人), 她的生活陷入困境. Her husband died suddenly. All of sudden, she becomes a widow. Her husband didn't leave fortune for his spouse, therefore her life is in a direment.

The 3 words for widow cannot be interchanged in the above example.

Hope it helps!

[miss_China_so_much]

寡妇 is more used in spoken language. Also 遗孀 is politer than 寡妇

[Koneko]

Thank you! But I am still not very sure under which situation I should use 遺孀 and 寡婦.

My understanding from your earlier explanation would be this:-

遺孀 - Use this when her husband has just passed away.

寡婦 - Use this when her husband passed away a while ago.

Is this correct?

So is it the same case for 鰥夫?

[xiaocai]

I don't think they are different on this aspect.

However, in semantic nuance's example you can see that 寡妇 usually stands alone while 遗孀 follows the possessive adjective(or the hasband's name).

[semantic nuance]

Hello Koneko,

You will say 我是一個寡婦.(I am a widow.), but you won't say 我是一個遺孀. 遺孀 is used when a woman bereft of a husband when addressed to others, as in my earlier example sentence. 他的遺孀, you won't say, 他的寡婦. It has nothing to do with the time passage.

遺孀 can only mean woman bereft of a husband. And its counterpart is 鰥夫 a widower.

Perhaps you can understand it in this way, though a bit illogical out of my following explanation.

寡 can mean 'few, scanty' (寡少的) 'alone' as in 孤寡(gu1gua3, meaning orphan and widow) , or 'the only' as in 寡人(the title of the emperor in ancient China), so 寡婦 is a woman who's 'alone' now because her husband is dead.

遺 means something left, so when you use 遺孀, 遺孀's identity is related to "something left", for instance, 我是他的遺孀. Hope you understand what I'm driving at. :-)

Hope it helps!