half-widow
n.— «Graham Cardwell has shown no inclination to return to his family, and, since he had done nothing illegal, the police are keeping his whereabouts secret. So Jane, too, remains a half-widow, the mystery of her husband’s vanishing as painfully opaque as ever.» —“The Vanishing Season” Independent (United Kingdom) Oct. 10, 1999. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
An anadrome is a word that forms a whole new word when you spell it backwards. For example, the word “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.” Some people’s first names are anadromes. There’s the girl named Noel...