widow-maker

• widow maker, widowmaker

From widow +‎ maker. For sense 4, compare German Witwenmacher.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɪ.dəʊˌmeɪ.kəɹ/, /-də-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɪ.doʊˌmeɪ.kəɹ/, /-də-/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: wid‧ow-mak‧er

widow-maker (plural widow-makers)

1. (idiomatic) Something which or someone who takes a person's life, particularly men; a lethal hazard that affects mostly men or is specific to a primarily male trade.
   • c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:

     O, it grieves my soul, / That I must draw this metal from my side / To be a widow-maker!

   • 1906, Rudyard Kipling, Harp Song of the Dane Women:

     What is a woman that you forsake her, / And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, / To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

   • 1973, Peter F. Drucker, Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices, published 1999, page 316:

     Finally, jobs that are 'widow-makers' should be rethought and restructured. In the heyday of the great sailing ships, around 1850, just before the coming of steam, every shipping company had a widow-maker on its hands once in a while. ... One typical 'widow-maker' has been the job of international vice-president in the large American company.

2. (forestry) The detached or broken limb of a tree, a hazard to those walking underneath.

   Synonym: fool killer

3. (medicine, informal) An occlusion of the left coronary artery or its anterior interventricular branch; which is likely to cause a fatal heart attack.
5. (military, slang) The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.