Loneliness

How to spell loneliness

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce loneliness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does loneliness mean?

1. nounThe unhappy feeling of being isolated or without companionship.

Loneliness in a sentence

• Moving to a new city brought an unexpected sense of loneliness.

• Working from home for years, he struggled with growing loneliness.

Where does loneliness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built on 'lone', which is itself a clipped form of 'alone', a word that originally meant 'all one', that is, completely by oneself. From 'lone' English formed the adjective 'lonely', recorded around 1600 and famously used by Shakespeare to describe someone solitary or remote, and from 'lonely' came the abstract noun 'loneliness', the state of being lonely. The whole family ultimately rests on the Old English roots 'all' and 'an' (one), making this a thoroughly native Germanic formation rather than a borrowing. The spelling trap is the seam in the middle: the adjective ends in -ly, but when -ness is added the y turns to i, giving the easily mistyped sequence -liness rather than -lyness. Remembering that 'lonely' loses its y the same way 'happy' becomes 'happiness' keeps the spelling on track.

How the word is built

• lone (solitary, a shortened form of 'alone')
• -li- (the adjective ending -ly, with y changed to i)
• -ness (noun-forming suffix: state or quality)