Etymology of today's entry gives no context to the phrase. Why isn't the railed platform called simply "wife's peak"? There needs to be some explan that so many fishermen died at sea that their women were left widows.

ETYMOLOGY:
In the 18th and 19th centuries sailors' wives used such platforms to look for signs of their husbands returning home.

Hello and welcome since I happen to pass here.
About the hazards of sailors; could it not be so that since you understand why it is called widow's rail without further context, everybody else does?

(the devil's advocate )

Firstly, the phrase is "widow's walk", an important correction because "widow's peak" is the term used for a V-shaped point formed by the hair near the top of the human forehead, from a superstition that it meant early widowhood (for a woman). It is a dominant genetic trait (I have one, 2 of my three boys have one, and interestingly, one that does not is a twin!).


The quotation from the email is: ETYMOLOGY: In the 18th and 19th centuries sailors' wives used such platforms to look for signs of their husbands returning home. Since the phrase is "widow's walk", I think the implication is clear that many of them expected to become widows, hence the anxiety about their husbands' return and subsequent walking.

ya scooped me, Bran! I guess I took too long composing... :0)

I suspect there was a precise literal basis for widow's walk, in that some widows whose widowhood was not in doubt would look to sea in mourning or remembrance.

Yes, well, it goes together.

twosleepy , I think sudz is making a subtle wordplay here, as the widow's walk is mostly placed at the peak of the building.

Certainly dying at sea was not an unlikely end to a sailor's life in those times, but it may have been just a metaphorical widowhood that the woman suffered, like the modern-day football widow only more so.

When learning ancient Greek many years ago I remember for some unknown reason having to translate from English into Greek stupid sentences about dead widows being thrown into the sea.

Ah! Real barbarians those Old Greeks. At least the widows were dead.

I had a widow's peak at the top of my forehead, but alas now my forehead reaches to the crown of my head!!

A dead widow's peak perhaps?

"God only made a few perfect heads and put hair on the rest..." - Anon

That's one I hadn't heard yet!
When we say someone has 'a good head ' we mean he has a good brain. In that sense your saying could be associated with the also Anon. one -- 'on brains no hair will grow '.