lone

Shortened from alone.

• enPR: lōn
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ləʊn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /loʊn/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

  Rhymes: -əʊn

• Homophone: loan

lone (not comparable)

1. Solitary; having no companion.

   a lone traveler or watcher

   • 1741, William Shenstone, The Judgment of Hercules:

     When I have on those pathless wilds appeared, / And the lone wanderer with my presence cheered.

   • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:

     The Bat—they called him the Bat. […]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.

   • 2020 January 22, “School director arrested as a suspect in Lop Buri gold shop robbery”, in Thai PBS World‎, Bangkok: Thai Public Broadcasting Service, retrieved 2020-01-22:

     The director of a school in Thailand's central province of Sing Buri is in police custody under suspicion of being the lone perpetrator of a gold shop robbery at a mall in Lop Buri province on January 9th, during which three people, including a two-year old^[sic] boy, were murdered and four others [were] wounded.

2. Isolated or lonely; lacking companionship.
3. Sole; being the only one of a type.

   the lone male audience member at the concert

4. Situated by itself or by oneself, with no neighbours.

   a lone house;  a lone isle

   • 1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LXV:

     By a lone wall a lonelier column rears.

5. (archaic) Unfrequented by human beings; solitary.
   • c. 1715, Alexander Pope, Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount:

     Thus vanish sceptres, coronets, and balls, / And leave you on lone woods, or empty walls.

   • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     He made a turn or two in the shop, and looked for Hope among the instruments; but they obstinately worked out reckonings for the missing ship, in spite of any opposition he could offer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea.

6. (archaic) Single; unmarried, or in widowhood.
   • Collection of Records (1642)

     Queen Elizabeth being a lone woman.

   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear.

• (sole): only

• alone
• lonely
• lonesome

• Elon, Leno, Leon, León, NOEL, Noel, Nole, Noël, elon, enol, leno, neol., noel, nole, noël, one L

lone

1. plural of loon

lone

1. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of lonen

• IPA^(key): [ˈlɔɲe]

lone n

1. locative singular of lono

lone

1. Alternative form of lhoan
   • 1867, OBSERVATIONS BY THE EDITOR:

     F. brone, eelone, hone, lone, sthone, sthrone.

     E. brand, island, hand, land, stand, strand.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 52