"True widow" is Paul’s precise category in 1 Timothy 5:3-16: "Honour widows that are widows indeed." A "true widow" is the older woman, sixty or above, without family to support her, of faithful character (one husband, brought up children, lodged strangers, washed the saints’ feet), who depends on the church’s ongoing care and gives herself to "supplications and prayers night and day" (1 Timothy 5:5). She is distinguished sharply from younger widows, whom Paul urges to remarry, bear children, and guide the house (1 Timothy 5:14). The category protects the church from idle dependence on the one hand and neglect of the truly needy on the other — diaconal sobriety, not sentimentality.