WO'N suggested posting etymologies of three words:
The second I chose to do first:

Main Entry: dow·a·ger
Pronunciation: 'dau-i-j&r


Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French douagiere, from douage dower, from
douer to endow, from Latin dotare, from dot-, dos gift, dower -- more
at DATE
Date: 1530
1 : a widow holding property or a title from her deceased husband
2 : a dignified elderly woman

The second word, spinster, was in www.takeourword.com, Issue 49:

As might seem obvious, this word derives from spin. It is a
reference to the spinning of yarn from wool. Any woman who
spun wool for a living was known as a spinster beginning in about
the 13th century. Eventually, the word came to be appended to a
woman's name as an indication of her occupation. By the 17th
century the term was used to signify any unmarried woman, and it
was used in legal documents for that purpose. Later, however,
spinster came to apply to older, unmarried women. This
association likely occurred because the older a single woman was, the longer she had been known as
so-and-so spinster.

His third word was "bachelor"

: : Bachelor originated ?probably before 1300 ?bacheler?: a young man, a squire, a young unmarried
man; later a young knight (before 1376), a university graduate or a junior member of a guild (1418). The
word is borrowed from Old French ?bacheler,? ?bachelier,? from Medieval Latin ?baccalaris,? probably a
variant of ?baccalarius? helper or tenant on a ?baccalaria,? section of land; later ?baccalarious? also had
the meaning ?junior member of a guild, university student,? the latter meaning seen in the pun on
?baccalaureus? under ?baccalaureate.?? From the ?Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology? by Robert
K. Barnhart (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1995).