Definition of "loneliness"
loneliness
noun
countable and uncountable, plural lonelinesses
The condition or state of being alone or having no companions.
Quotations
[I] was designing a piece of Landscape […] wherein I meant to expresse […] the beauties of the Vegetables, that do adorn that place, in the highest perfection I could: But presently after, being cast into Prison, I was deprived both of light and lonelinesse, two main helpers in that Art […]
1657, Richard Ligon, A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados, London: Humphrey Moseley, Dedicatory letter to the Bishop of Salisbury
Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world sank into the child’s heart for the first time.
1837 February, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “Treats of Oliver Twist’s Growth, Education, and Board”, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], published 1838, page 20
The state of being unfrequented or devoid of human activity (of a place or time).
Quotations
The rest was all flat marsh. It would have been a depressing place on a wet evening. Seen under a morning sun, with a fresh wind blowing, and the air filled with the crying of birds, there was something fine and fresh and clean about its loneliness.
1953, C. S. Lewis, chapter 5, in The Silver Chair, New York: Scholastic, published 1987, pages 57–58
(obsolete) A desire to be alone; disposition to solitude.
Quotations
[…] I seeThe mystery of your loneliness, and findYour salt tears’ head: now to all sense ’tis grossYou love my son […]
c. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]