grasswidow [grăs wĭd’ō]
n
1. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Animals) any songbird of the family Fringillidae, having a short stout bill for feeding on seeds and, in most species, a bright plumage in the male. Common examples are the goldfinch, bullfinch, chaffinch, siskin, and canary
2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Animals) any of various similar or related birds. Related adj fringilline
[Middle English gras widewe, from Old English græs widuwe; see ghrē- in Indo-European roots.]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
The Grasswidow (5th-22nd February)
The grasswidow had first a name and then a story. He was a small bird with yellow-green feathers and some blue and red spots on the breast. He would come at my window every morning at nine and then entered the kitchen and peaked some crumb on the table. Then he would immediately fly away to come back at nine the day after. I suppose had I not lived on the fourth floor I might have never met this singular friend who would regularly come for short visits. When one lives so high up, it’s easy to fall in love with the sky. Before meeting this friend I used to spend entire days looking outside the window at the grey face of winter. I would prepare my coffee and check the plants – but soon my eyes would get beyond them to the meadow down away, I would inspect the entire courtyard to catch some unusual movement and slowly my look would enter the trees’ branches. Without any awareness I would be staring at the sky for half an hour – just till the phone rang or the washing machine interrupted its monotonous ebbing of cloths. He must have noticed my staring at the sky with my cup of coffee, long before I saw him. However one day, as I was airing the house to get the rare sun into the rooms and dust the gray color from the plants’ leaves, the books and my scattered clothing, I saw him entering the windowsill and pose his feet on the little desk in my bedroom. It was a handful of colors with a sharp, if short, yellow beak. He immediately flew away and I turned to my things with a smile. As I went to the kitchen, there he was again and it was bigger a surprise – because by now I already knew him. I stayed on the threshold without getting any closer, because I didn’t expect it, because I didn’t want him to run away. Fly away. It beaked some crumbs on the tablecloth, turning on the spot of light which seemed having brought him. As he moved, different colors gleamed and I could better distinguish the longer green-yellow feathers and I also saw those small, thick red and blue spots on his breast, which made of him a fish of sky, a marvel. Looking at some animals one has got often the impression of being also looked at, although secretly – not stared at, nonetheless precisely perceived. I’ve never had problems with letting my intentions and myself being smelled and felt by animals. I trust that it would only prevent them from attacking me – were they to know we are not enemy. He also was not looking at me, with his immobile eyes conjuring the next crumb to pick up, and yet had I moved a millimeter – he would have flown away, I knew that. Actually had I moved only a millimeter, he would have recognized me as a friend, but clumsy humans, to whom I belong with my awkward movements, make always a show of their intentions, and that is really unpleasant for every creature to see. So I remained still watching him as I had previously looked at the sky, but my feelings were alive and bewitched by this little bird which seemed having transformed a forgotten music in visual images: his feathers and his eyes were as fixed as stars. Abruptly he spread his wings and disappeared out of the window. On the table flakes of light lay on the flatware and the washing machine had never stopped thumbing and rolling the cloths around. I spent the day, as far as I recollect, reading and writing. Not long ago I found this note:
February the 5th. A grasswidow entered into the kitchen this morning. He ate some crumbs and immediately flew away. It was magnificent.
I couldn’t know nor did I expect that he would return the morning after. Maybe the memory of the simple but beautiful previous day experience unwittingly pushed me to open the kitchen window again at the same hour – but I had not noticed the coincidence yet. I had just my coffee ready and I bent to get some milk from the fridge. I was searching on the bottom shelves when casting sidelong a glance on my right I saw him on the naked tablecloth. He was looking at me – at least that’s how I perceived the thing – and then flew away. I wondered how long he had been there, still on the table, while I searched for milk. My solitude was a beautiful mantel for that little guy. But as soon as I glimpsed him, he was away. Needless to say, I spread some crumbs on the table the following morning before opening the window at nine. When I returned to the kitchen, the crumbs were gone. That was the beginning of our friendship. I’d never forget to leave some crumbs on the table, and it did not matter whether it was sunny or raining; at nine o’clock the grasswidow would enter my window and beak his portion of bread or biscuits. By now we had learned to share the room; I’d make my coffee and he would peak the crumbs on the table – apparently without minding each other – actually sharing our breakfast. I could also look at him now and he was not scared of my sweetness anymore – he would instead return my greetings with some short flights between my four walls. There was something mad about it – one learns how small and eng the place of living is observing a bird’s attempt at flying around. I feel like crashing my head against the wall – with so much blue flapping of that little creature. But then he would fly out and the eyes can follow him traversing the sky. And I share the joy. I never tried to touch him, or to get too close, since our intimacy was the air, the sky, life colors: it was time, daybreak and returns. We shared a nameless wonder, not touch but gestures. A dance, a deep attempt. I’m not sure if I had given much thought on the subject at the time, or just enjoyed this uncommon routine. In my diary I found only a note, on July the 15th:
The grasswidow is my friend. We don’t know our respective names. Maybe I’m “human” for him as he’s “grasswidow” for me, and that’s all. But we share life like only birds do – I think; like only humans do – he must believe. And we don’t know how.
Thinking about it in retrospect it’s surprising that no other mention of our company entered my journal in those days. But it has got a reason, probably the same reason for our meetings and friendship. Some sort of “loud secret” – many call it “an elephant in the room” – obviousness that doesn’t need any mention – others refer to these facts like to childhood times: one hardly takes note of them – till they occupy the entire memory at a senile age. The grasswidow almost never entered my diary at the time of our early friendship – although I would attempt at composing a novel with his name now, were I a writer. Yes, “The Grasswidow” would be the title of the novel, as simple as that. Hope, life, belief, trust – they all rarely enter a journal – but there’s no other reason than them if I filled my diary with such a daily constancy and application. It might have been exactly this little bird, the reason why I started my journal. Each letter resembles so much the grasswidow’s footprints. My care for my notes betrayed a strong desire of having them as a fine architecture, sprayed with poetry, built as well as his nest I never saw. And yet he brought it on my tablecloth – every morning at nine. He brought a luminous sky on my tablecloth at nine, like the best hour. In September my diary seems only concerned with him – it’s his sea I’m trying to draw down. It was the time when I made the astonishing discovery. Our reciprocal mindfulness had never allowed me to stare at him too long or firmly – as one would never stare at the foreigner in the metro, at first – as one wouldn’t stare at his beloved whilst their mouths are slowly meeting, later – also: one wouldn’t stare at death too sharply – not out of fear – just to let it go. Exactly out of fear I must have looked at him flying away on that early day in September – the same fear which might have induced a lover sometimes to observe the face of his lover while his touch was all over him. A promise ad liminem – the day after. He took flight out of the window, as he had done already for so many months, and I noticed that there was a blade of grass in his beak – and he was gone. After all, it’s not so uncommon that birds carry sticks or similar stuff with their beaks and in September there are still generous meadows which offer plenty of grass and flowers. And yet I was surprised and immediately after also surprised of my surprise. I even took note of this strange feeling of mine:
September the 10th. Why did he carry a blade of grass? Where did it come from? I couldn’t prevent myself today from thinking such absurdity for good an hour. Eventually I prepared my lesson.
Since September the 10th all my entries simply refer to “he” instead of précising “the grasswidow.” My surprise though had good reasons to be. My feelings turned into a real turmoil the day after. This time I intentionally looked at him before he would leave and noticed clearly a blade of grass in its beak. I was absolutely sure that he had none as he had entered the room. I knew there was no reason to search for some spot in the kitchen where he could have found grass, nonetheless I did. And I found neither grass nor any suggestion of where grass could have been. Soon I became obsessed with this phenomenon which would repeat itself every morning at nine and for which I could find no explanation. He would beak my crumbs and leave with a blade of grass. It’s easy to imagine my dismay. So it continued for all September, and it did not stop in October, nor in November. In December he was still entering my room, pecking crumbs on my tablecloth and then he would leave with a blade of grass. By now my diary had become a meadow of wonder and consternation, but there was also some peace and abandonment.
What for so much grass? What for these notes? And him?
– reads an entry from January the 10th. I have no explanation for such remarks if not the wild unrest I had fallen in. January and February were again the hardest months. Winter had been harsh and it did not stop being so. The sky was not generous of snow and the gray had expanded to cover both buildings and streets. Courtyards were deserted. Only at nine o’clock the grasswidow would come and leave again afterwards. On February the 22nd I had a cup of coffee in my hands. My friend entered the kitchen as everyday at nine and sat on the tablecloth where biscuits’ crumbs lay for him. He was beautiful and his blue spots even more gleaming against the gray light. He looked at me – or it seemed so. I looked at him – or it seemed so. I knew it would have been the last day of his visits. I wouldn’t have met him again. He took flight with the last blade of grass. I drank my coffee and went in our bedroom. Where it was supposed to be a bed, there was a meadow. I knew today you would come back.
My love, sixteen days!
Definition and Etymology
gras- (heuschober-) witwe u. dgl.
GRASSWIDOW
Main Entry: grass widow
Function: noun
Date: 1528
1: chiefly dialect: a: a discarded mistress b: a woman who has had an illegitimate child
2 a: a woman whose husband is temporarily away from her b: a woman divorced or separated from her husband
Origin: Early ModE, discarded mistress (similar to Du grasweduwe, Ger strohwittwe): prob. allusion is to bed of grass, hay or straw as opposed to the conjugal bed. [The "grass" might also refer to the mattress, which used to be filled with grass: The "widow" is left back on the grass/mattress.]
Word History: The term grass widow cries out for explanation of what grass means and how grass widow came to have its varied though related senses. Grass probably refers to a bed of grass or hay as opposed to a real bed. This association would help explain the earliest recorded sense of the word (1528), "an unmarried woman who has lived with one or more men," as well as the related senses "an abandoned mistress" and "the mother of an illegitimate child." Later on, after the sense of grass had been obscured, people may have interpreted grass as equivalent to the figurative use of pasture, as in out to pasture. Hence grass widow could have developed the senses "a divorced or separated wife" or "a wife whose husband is temporarily absent."
Silbentrennung:
Stroh·wit·we Plural: Stroh·wit·wen
Bedeutungen:
[1] Vorübergehend zurückbleibende Partnerin in einer Lebensgemeinschaft, deren Partner oder Partnerin kurzzeitig abwesend ist. Männliche Form: Strohwitwer
Strohwitwe
-wittib, -wittbe, f., frau, die nur vorübergehend (meist wegen einer reise des ehemannes) 'witwe' ist. die anwendung des grundwortes witwe auf eine frau, deren mann nicht verstorben ist, weist auf eine ursprünglich scherzhafte benennung mit anspielung auf geschlechtliche beziehungen (vgl. witwe 7 a, teil 14, 2, sp. 844); strohwitwe hat diesen sinn bis heute jedoch kaum noch bewahrt. der zusammenhang mit dem ersten kompositionsgliede stroh ist umstritten und oft erörtert (Behaghel zs. f. dt. wortf. 1, 79; Hohlfeldt ebda 2, 347; Grienberger ebda 4, 298; Storfer dickicht d. spr. [1937] 148; Schoppe germ.-rom. mon.-schr. 26, 71; Holthausen Anglia beibl. 43, 283; Kretschmer anz. d. akad. Wien, phil.-hist. kl. [1942] 79, 26). die deutung dieser erst seit dem 18. jh. belegten zusammensetzung hat davon auszugehen, dasz in den germanischen sprachen eine reihe z. t. älterer bildungen ähnlicher art begegnen: mnd. grasswedewe (1598) 'mädchen, das seine jungfrauschaft verloren hat' (itt sin ock underwilen solchen grasswedewen thor ewigen schande leder ... nagedichtet ... worden Neocorus dithm. chron. 1, 97 D.); engl. grasswidow (1528) 'an unmarried woman, who has cohabited with one or more men', (1859) 'a married woman whose husband is absent from her' Murray 4, 2, 367; nl. grasweduwe (ohne bel.) 'gehuwde vrouw wier echtgenoot tijdelijk afwezig is' woordenb. d. nederl. taal 5, 597; dän. graesenke (um 1700) 'kvinde, hvis mand er (midlertidig) bortrejst' ordbok over d. danske sprog 7, 240; daneben auch (vielleicht schon unter einflusz des hd. wortes) straaenke 'kone, som ligger ene mens hindes mand er borte' (um 1700) ebda 22, 231; schwed. gräsänka (1738) 'gift kvinna vars make for tillfället är bortrest', dial. auch 'liderlig flicka' ordbok över svenska språket G 1182; hierher auch nl. haeckweduwe (urspr. wohl zu haeck 'heuschober') 'veufue attendante son mari estant en long voyage' Plantijn thes. (1573) V 1b. nhd. strohwitwe steht damit in einem groszräumigen kreis entsprechender bezeichnungen wie gras- (heuschober-) witwe u. dgl., seine begriffliche herausbildung vollzieht sich ebenfalls groszräumig und ist seit dem 16. jh. (Plantijn) zu verfolgen; weiterhin steht der begriffsinhalt 'frau, deren mann verreist ist' in verbindung mit einem offensichtlich älteren begriffsinhalt '(unzüchtiges) mädchen, das keine jungfrau mehr ist' (zur letzteren bedeutung vgl. auch strohbraut [1399] und strohjungfer). der ursprüngliche sinn des kompositionsgliedes stroh- wird daher auch in dem älteren, besonders bei graswitwe auftretenden begriffsinhalt zu suchen sein. gemeinsamer ausgangspunkt dieser zusammensetzungen ist die lagerstätte (gras, heuschober, stroh), auf der das mädchen als 'witwe' verlassen wurde (Grienberger); die scherzhafte anwendung dieser benennungen auf eine frau, die nur vorübergehend als 'witwe' verlassen wurde, lag nahe (vgl. hierzu den beleg aus Faust I s. v. stroh 3 f unten).
Strohwitwe/r
Strohwitwer und Strohwitwe sind Bezeichnungen für in einer Ehe oder Beziehung lebende Partner, die zeitweilig allein leben, also „Witwer bzw. Witwe auf Zeit“ sind. Typischerweise tritt eine solche Situation bei Reisen ein, die nicht gemeinsam unternommen werden. Die Beziehung besteht dabei weiter, eine Fortsetzung des gemeinsamen Lebensalltags ist zu erwarten.
Es besteht keine Konvention darüber, wie lange man alleinstehend leben muss, um zutreffend als Strohwitwer/Strohwitwe bezeichnet werden zu können. So ist eine Trennung von lediglich einigen Minuten ebenso denkbar wie ein Zeitraum von mehreren Jahren.
Begriffsherkunft:
Der Ursprung und die Entwicklung der Begriffe Strohwitwer und -witwe sind nicht eindeutig geklärt; es existieren unterschiedliche Thesen.
Zunächst ist neben Stroh auch Gras als Vorsilbe zu finden, vor allem im niederdeutschen Raum und auch in der englischen Sprache, dort als Grasswidow(er).
In Goethes Faust I wird das Bild des Strohs auf einen zurückgelassenen Gatten angewandt: Dort klagt Marthe über ihren Ehemann Er geht stracks in die Welt hinein / Und lässt mich auf dem Stroh allein. Stroh steht hier offensichtlich für Bett. So kann Strohwitwe(r) als Bezeichnung für einen zwar liierten, aber dennoch allein – statt im gemeinsamen Ehebett – nächtigenden Partner erklärt werden, der sozusagen auf dem Stroh, also im Bett, alleinstehend ist.
Einer anderen Auffassung nach entstammt der Begriff einer Analogie aus dem 14. Jahrhundert: Demnach wurde die Umschreibung „scheinbare Braut“, mhd. strôbrût, für eine ledige Mutter verwendet.
Eine weitere Auslegung sieht den Ursprung in der Landwirtschaft des 16. bis 17. Jahrhunderts. Damals reisten Truppen von jungen Bauern durch das Land, die sich im Sommer auf großen Landgütern als Hilfsarbeiter verdingten. Oft halfen sie beim Sicheln des Korns. Die Frauen dieser Männer, die in den Heimatdörfern auf die Rückkehr ihrer Männer warteten, bezeichnete man landläufig als „Strohwitwen“.
From: Anatoly Liberman, Grass Widows and Straw Men
Nowadays a woman is called a grass widow whose husband had to leave home (for example, obliged to work far away from his family). Alternatively, she may be a divorced woman or a woman living apart from her husband (so in American English). Why grass? A definite answer does not exist, but a few things can be said with confidence. First of all, we have to get rid of folk etymology, according to which, grass in this phrase goes back to French grace, with the whole allegedly meaning “courtesy widow.” This etymology (one can find it in respectable old dictionaries and in letters to the editor) should be ignored because exact equivalents of Engl. grass widow exist in German, Dutch, and Danish, whereas the French idiom is veuve de paille, that is, “straw widow.” In English, the most recent sense (“a woman living away from her husband”) surfaced only in 1859 with reference to India. Hence the often-repeated conjecture that the first grass widows were the wives of servicemen: while the men sweated in the heat, the women waited for them on “greener pastures.” In older texts, none of which, however, predates 1528 (OED), grass widow had a much coarser meaning, namely “a woman who lost her virginity before the wedding” and “a deserted mistress.” (Compare the definition from a 1700 dictionary; repeated in 1725). “One that pretends to have been married, but never was, yet has children.”) In this context, many European languages use the word straw. So we have three riddles. Why straw, why the substitution of grass for straw in English (Engl. straw widow has never had any currency), and why the change from “deserted mistress” to “wife temporarily separated from her husband”?
As always, one finds some suggestions in Notes and Queries. This is what Thomas Ratcliffe wrote in 1884. He said that if a man had to work for months on end at a long distance from home and his wife’s conduct “was not circumspect enough,” she was said “to be ‘out at grass’; and when her behavior was such that her next-door neighbors could not any longer bear it, a besom, mop, or broom was put outside the front door, and reared against the house wall” (the spelling has been Americanized). Nothing is more venomous than the wrath of the virtuous. We will restrain our indignation but keep in mind the allusion to being “out at grass.”
Our most solid evidence comes from Germany, where Graswitwe “grass widow” competes with Strohwitwe “straw widow.” Strohwitwe surfaced only in 1715 and has the meaning of Engl. grass widow. As noted, the earliest English citation of grass widow has been traced to 1528, while in a German document addressed to pastors, straw brides (those who cohabited with a man before the wedding) are first mentioned in 1399. Since the word for straw bride is used casually, we can assume that everybody understood it. In most probability, Germany is the country where phrases like straw widow and straw bride originated. Other languages must have borrowed it from German. The brides who came to the altar after losing their virginity (and this is the situation discussed in the 1399 document) were made to wear a straw wreath. In some places, demeaning punishments were also extended to the men (“straw bridegrooms”) who dishonored their brides. But straw wreaths are secondary: the idea of putting them on the head of a sinner came from the notion of the straw widow.
Those who thought that straw (or a bed of straw) symbolized extramarital sex, as opposed to the family bed, were probably right. A meeting between two lovers in a meadow, “out at grass,” a secret tryst, whose witnesses are the sun, flowers, and a little bird that knows how to keep secrets, is described in one of the most famous 13th century German lyrics. It contains a triumphant monologue by a love-swept maiden. We are not told about the consequences of that rendezvous. A meadow is a place of pleasure. Reference to straw deprives the situation of all its charm. The “straw widow’s” path was from joy on the grass to intercourse on a bed of straw, the humiliation of wearing a straw wreath (a relatively happy end), but more often to lifelong ostracism, exile, and occasionally death by a member of the woman’s own family (a brother, for instance), as documents show.
The riddle of grass versus straw is not insoluble. In English dialects, straw was not too rare a synonym for grass, so that strawberry seems to have meant “grassberry, berries growing in the grass.” Regardless of whether this etymology is right, it provides a clue to the interchange between German Strohwitwe and Engl. grass widow. When English-speakers took over the German word (apparently, in the 16th century or some time earlier), they replaced straw with grass. There was no need to do so, for the noun straw would have served the purpose equally well. Perhaps the borrowing occurred in an area in which straw “grass” occurred with some regularity. Such details are beyond reconstruction. The rise of the word strawberry was also unnecessary. The most frequent name of this berry in the Germanic languages is like German Erdbeere “earth berry,” and its counterpart in Old English existed but yielded to the rare synonym that continues into the present.
Meaning can deteriorate or be ameliorated. As a rule, words meaning “girl; woman,” if they change, tend to acquire negative connotations, for example, from “the loved one,” “maiden,” or “lass” to “prostitute.” This is what happened to whore (that is, hore, for w was never pronounced in it, and the modern spelling, modeled on what, when, where, which, why, is absurd: compare German Hure), a cognate of Latin carus “dear.” But unexpectedly, grass widow went up rather than down: from “discarded mistress” to “woman living away from her husband.”
We should now throw a quick glance at straw man. In English books, it turned up at the end of the 16th century and designated “scarecrow.” The development from “scarecrow” to “a figure of straw; a sham substitute for a real man” poses no problems. It has been suggested that straw widow, in its German guise, derives from straw man, for German Strohmann also exists. According to this hypothesis, to the extent that a straw man is not a real man, a straw widow is not a real widow. But chronology militates against this idea: Strohwitwe precedes Strohmann by many centuries. In numerous rituals, human-looking figures made of straw were burned and thus substituted for real persons. French homme de paille “man of straw” may have served as a model for the Germanic word. It appears that straw man and grass widow (or even “straw widow”) have nothing to do with each other. This is fine. In our liberated times, grass widows are supposedly quite happy the way they are.
From a Blog:
A Question:
In contemporary English the phrase is used to refer to someone who's spouse (or "significant other") is temporarily away (traveling or whatever), leaving the person to whom the phrase refers home alone.
Is there any catchy French phrase that can be used in this sort of situation?
An Answer:
There's the idea of 'être sur la paille' - being abandoned or in a desperate situation.