Word.ws English Dictionary

lonesome

Syllables: lone·some/ˈləʊnsəm//ˈloʊnsəm/

lonesome adjective: unhappy due to being alone; lonely.

Adjective

lonesome (comparative more lonesome, superlative most lonesome)

  1. Unhappy due to being alone; lonely.
    • 'Where'er the sun shakes out his spears, and the lonesome waters mirror up the moon, where'er storms roll [...] there shall thy power pass and thy dominion find a home.'1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

Noun

lonesome (plural lonesomes)

  1. (informal) Oneself alone.
    • I sat and watched the cars pass all by my lonesome.

lonesome meaning in Kannada and Malay

lonesome in Kannada

ಏಕಾಂಗಿಯಾದ, ಒಂಟಿಯಾಗಿರುವ, ಒಬ್ಬಂಟಿಗನಾದ, ಏಕಾಂಗಿತನದ

lonesome in Malay

unhappy due to being alone
sunyi, sepi

Examples of lonesome in a sentence

  • He sat off on one side, lonesome as a country shouse.
  • What was remarkable about his music wasn’t the folk-rock acoustic strum or the stoic, lonesome vocals.
  • The band is starting, something lonesome, off-key, and drowning in reverb.

All 24 example sentences with lonesome

Forms of lonesome

Adjective
comparativemore lonesome
superlativemost lonesome
alternative Scotlandlanesome
Noun
plurallonesomes

Origin of lonesome

From lone + -some, mid-17th century.

Words formed from lonesome

Questions about lonesome

What does lonesome mean?
Lonesome means unhappy due to being alone; lonely.
What is lonesome in Kannada?
Lonesome in Kannada is ಏಕಾಂಗಿಯಾದ, ಒಂಟಿಯಾಗಿರುವ, ಒಬ್ಬಂಟಿಗನಾದ. See Lonesome meaning in Kannada.
What part of speech is lonesome?
Lonesome can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce lonesome?
Lonesome is pronounced /ˈləʊnsəm/ (UK).

Words near lonesome in the dictionary

  1. lonerish
  2. lonerism
  3. loneroid
  4. loners
  5. lones it
  6. lonesome
  7. lonesomely
  8. lonesomeness
  9. lonesomenesses
  10. lonesomer
  11. lonesomes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lonesome (page history and authors); lonesome (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lonesome.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Knabrupt-lonesome.wav.

Cite this entry: “lonesome.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lonesome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.