Solitude

How to spell solitude

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce solitude

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does solitude mean?

1. nounThe state of being alone, especially when sought out as a calm or private time away from others.

Solitude in a sentence

• After a noisy week at work, she craved a few hours of solitude.

• The remote cabin offered the kind of solitude he needed to finish writing.

Where does solitude come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Solitude comes from the Latin noun solitudo, which meant loneliness or a lonely, deserted place. That word was built on the adjective solus, meaning alone or by oneself, the same root that gives English words like sole, solo, and solitary. English took the word in during the late 1300s by way of Old French solitude, where it carried the sense of being apart from other people. Over the centuries the meaning softened from bleak isolation toward the often positive idea of chosen, peaceful aloneness. The spelling trap lives in the middle and the ending: the unstressed vowel after the l is easy to mishear, and the word closes with -ude rather than the -ood you might guess from the sound.

How the word is built

• solit- (from Latin solus, alone)
• -ude (noun suffix marking a state or condition)