It's not a common expression at all. I never hear it day to day, and I feel like I remember looking it up before, although I can't remember where I read it. I would say it's obsolete, because we don't need such idioms and just say "She's divorced," "She's separated," "Her husband is deployed for a year," depending on the circumstances. "Grass widow" as a category seems very old-fashioned.
Well if you already decided in your head that it isn't obsolete, why did you come and ask us?
Edit: "Shanghaied" is still a useful word for when somebody is grabbed or hijacked from their original purpose. On the other hand, the social status of women who are abandoned/separated from their husbands/lovers without actually being widowed is no long such a delicate thing as it once was. So it makes sense for "grass widow" to fall into obsolescence in English.
It seems quite clear that it has become obsolete. The question is why did it become obsolete so far. And I think my example is very relevant (and I can find many more). The original situation shanghaiing was referring to does not exist any more. Yet the expression exists and now covers similar, but different situations. The situation described by the other expression does exist, whether it is perceived in the same way or not. There is absolutely no reasons why it could not be used now - at the very list behind the person's back. Gosh, people use terrible expressions behind others' backs! But not this one. Why?
That's interesting! It is just 1-2 generations back, yet seems to be firmly forgotten. I asked my colleague who is past 70, raised in NYC, he has not heard it either.
Let me reverse the question. Have you ever met a Russian speaker older than 16 who would not understand the meaning of this idiom? I've never had. Yet just today I asked half a dozen native English speakers, from 22 to 72, and none of them have ever heard this collocation. A few more told me that they have heard it but were not sure what it actually means.
Even if you were right, and I am sure you aren't, it does not agree with my sampling that showed that most English speakers never heard it,some heard but are unsure about the meaning, and very few actually know it.
Now I challenge you to call your Russian speaking friends and poll them. i am sure at least 90% will know exactly what it means.
I've definitely heard of it; I believe it was more common in print when I was much younger, ie thirty or forty years ago. I think the phrase was used occasionally back then by older people. I would agree that the phrase seems to have become archaic/obsolete with remarkable speed, and it occurs to me that I never did really know what it meant, which reinforces my belief that I stopped hearing/reading it a looong time ago. (Otherwise I'd have looked it up).
This exactly what puzzles me. Expressions become obsolete all the time, but this seems to be exceptionally fast. Nobody says "it's swell", or "we've licked them" any more, but everybody knows the meaning. We know, passively, idioms from 200 years ago, but not the one that apparently was common just two generations back... So weird!
I recently came across an American restaurant menu from 1943 that said "BUY WAR STAMPS AND LICK THE OTHER SIDE." A good number of the people I showed it to didn't get the double meaning.
IME, older words for "cool" do get revived from time to time. I've heard "swell" used before, though generally with a bit of irony. "Nifty", on the other hand, was a word we used enough that it lost its ironic tone entirely and just became an ordinary term of approbation.
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It's not a common expression at all. I never hear it day to day, and I feel like I remember looking it up before, although I can't remember where I read it. I would say it's obsolete, because we don't need such idioms and just say "She's divorced," "She's separated," "Her husband is deployed for a year," depending on the circumstances. "Grass widow" as a category seems very old-fashioned.
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Edit: "Shanghaied" is still a useful word for when somebody is grabbed or hijacked from their original purpose. On the other hand, the social status of women who are abandoned/separated from their husbands/lovers without actually being widowed is no long such a delicate thing as it once was. So it makes sense for "grass widow" to fall into obsolescence in English.
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That's what I would expect from most Russian speakers as well.
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Now I challenge you to call your Russian speaking friends and poll them. i am sure at least 90% will know exactly what it means.
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