Alone

How to spell alone

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce alone

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does alone mean?

1. adjectiveWithout other people present; on one's own.
2. adverbUsed to indicate that one person or thing is the only one, or acting without help.

Alone in a sentence

• adjective

  After the guests left, she sat alone in the quiet kitchen.

• adverb

  The rent alone swallows half of his monthly salary.

• adjective

  He prefers to travel alone so he can set his own pace.

• adverb

  She finished the whole report alone, without any support from the team.

Where does alone come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Alone began life in Middle English as the two-word phrase 'al one', meaning quite literally 'all one' or 'wholly by oneself'. The first element comes from Old English 'eall', meaning 'completely' or 'entirely', and the second from 'an', the ancestor of the modern numeral 'one'. Over time the two words were squeezed together into a single form, which is why the spelling still hides the word 'one' inside it even though the pronunciation has drifted away from it. The same 'al one' phrase also gave us 'lone', formed when speakers wrongly split 'alone' into 'a lone', and from 'lone' we later got 'lonely' and 'lonesome'. Remembering that alone is really 'all' plus 'one' is the surest way to keep the single l and the silent-feeling 'one' ending in place.

How the word is built

• al- (from all, completely)
• one (the numeral one)