Jane’s husband is dead. She’s a widow. Or, adjectivally, we could say she’s widowed.
Dick’s wife is dead. He’s a widower. Or, adjectivally, we could say he’s… ???
“Widowered” doesn’t sound right.
He’s widowed.
Concur. Both are widowed. The widow/widower pair is one of relatively few in English in which the feminine version is the root word and the masculine version takes a suffix.
Widower is an odd word in another way too. Take the sentence, “He’s a widower,” for instance. If you didn’t know the meaning, there isn’t enough context there to infer it. Based on how the English language usually works, a reasonable guess would be that the man in question was in the business of (or had the hobby of) killing husbands.
Since the question has already had a serious answer, wouldn’t be more logical if the surviving spouse was the widow, and the deceased was the widower?
Not at all. It just would mean that he sells widows.
looking
No, since generally we have names for the statuses of living people only. In the other case of relationship with deceased people, we have the word “orphan”, but no word for the orphan’s deceased parents.
Available.