What does "long-lost" mean?

Having been missing or unknown for a long period of time.

What is a synonym for "long-lost"?

Common synonyms include: consumed, dissipated, eroded, expended, forfeited, gone.

Long-lost

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Having been missing or unknown for a long period of time. not-comparable
"My long-lost brother showed up, borrowed money and vanished again."

Synonyms

All synonyms

consumed dissipated eroded expended forfeited gone

Example

More examples

""No hope have I my ancient fatherland, / or darling boys, or long-lost sire to see, / whom now perchance, the Danaans will demand, / poor souls! for vengeance, and their death decree, / to purge my crime, in daring to be free.""

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