[f. LONELY + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being lonely.
1. Want of society or company; the condition of being alone or solitary; solitariness, loneness.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, I. (1590), 49 b. That huge and sportfull assemblie grewe to him a tedious lonelinesse, esteeming no body founde, since Daiphantus was lost.
1645. Milton, Tetrach. (Gen. ii. 18). It is not good for man to be alone…. Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye nam’d not good.
1814. Byron, Corsair, I. viii. That man of loneliness and mystery.
1861. Geo. Eliot, Silas M., i. 2. The eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.
1874. Green, Short Hist., vii. § 3. 363. The loneliness of her [Elizabeth’s] position only reflected the loneliness of her nature.
2. Uninhabited or unfrequented condition or character (of a place); desolateness.
1746–7. Hervey, Medit. (1818), 8. The deep silence added to the gloomy aspect, and both heightened by the loneliness of the place, greatly increased the solemnity of the scene.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. ii. 11. The loneliness of the place was very impressive.
1900. J. Watson, in Expositor, Sept., 181. The unrelieved loneliness of mid-ocean.
b. A lonely spot. nonce-use.
1819. Shelley, Rosalind & Helen, 1029. In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses.
3. The feeling of being alone; the sense of solitude; dejection arising from want of companionship or society.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., VII. 403. He grew up From year to year in loneliness of soul.
1863. J. G. Murphy, Comm. Gen. xxv. 1. His loneliness on the death of Sarah may have prompted him to seek a companion of his old age.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights & Ins., II. xxx. 581. My own secret aches and lonelinesses.
