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• n  a widow holding property received from her deceased husband

• This is the flaw that makes Jem interrupt the boasting of a lineage-proud dowager to ask "Is this the Cousin Joshua who was locked up for so long?".
• In Beverly Hills, an uppity dowager surveyed the crowd in Saks's swank shop, asked: "Who are all these people?" Cracked the salesgirl: "They're cash customers.
• A pale, ailing dowager who bears an increasing resemblance to her father, John Davison Rockefeller, was installed in a four-room suite at Chicago's Drake Hotel last week.

News & Articles

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• Paul Giamatti Will Be the Next Ugly American on 'Downton Abbey'
  If the Dowager Countess Downton Abbey had problems with Shirley Maclaine's Americanness, just what on Earth is she going to do with Paul Giamatti. Cinema's reigning whiner-in-chief is set for a guest stint on the show, playing Harold Levinson, the brother of Downton matriarch Cora, Michael Ausiello of TVLine reported. 
  June 24, 2013 - The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo! News

Quotes

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• Boris Johnson in Bloomberg
  Brown "is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well," Johnson wrote. "He is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover, and who...
• Camille Paglia in Sydney Morning Herald
  I think, thanks to plastic surgery, America no longer has any dowager figures,Paglia says. "But here is Dame Edna, filling that role; pulling the strings. And she is a wonderful explosion of, and spoof of, celebrity culture. She announces...