Lonely

//ˈləʊnli// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unhappy due to feeling isolated from contact with other people.

    "At last My love has come along My lonely days are over And life is like a song"

  2. 2
    Unfrequented by people; desolate.

    "Only to those to whom in lonely passes in the night the gods have spoken, leaning through the stars, to those that have heard the voices of the gods above the morning or seen Their faces bending above the sea, only to those hath it been given to see Sardathrion, to stand where her pinnacles gathered together in the night fresh from the dreams of gods."

  3. 3
    Without companions; solitary.

    "By a lone wall a lonelier column rears."

Adjective
  1. 1
    marked by dejection from being alone wordnet
  2. 2
    devoid of creatures wordnet
  3. 3
    characterized by or preferring solitude wordnet
  4. 4
    lacking companions or companionship wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
lonesomedesolatelonesolitaryunsocialabandoned

Example

More examples

"It's lonely in the saddle since the horse died."

Etymology

From lone + -ly, or from an apheretic shortening of alonely. See lone.

Related phrases

it's lonely at the toplonely-heartlonely-heartedlonely-heartsplough a lonely furrow

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.