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^[1], 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.

7. (Philippines, politics, of an election or elected position) Not divided into multiple districts.

   lone congressional district

   Synonym: at-large (US)

• (sole): only

• alone
• lonely
• lonesome

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

lone

1. plural of loon

lone

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

lone

1. (Northern, West Midlands) Alternative form of lane

• 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