Word.ws English Dictionary

lorn

UK/lɔːn/US/lɔɹn/

lorn adjective: doomed; lost. Also the past participle of lese.

Adjective

lorn (comparative more lorn, superlative most lorn)

  1. (obsolete) Doomed; lost.
  2. (archaic) Abandoned, forlorn, lonely.
    • I loue thilke laſſe, (alas why do I loue:) / And am forlorne, (alas why am I lorne:) / Shee deignes not my good will, but doth reproue, / And of my rurall muſick holdeth ſcorne.1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “Ianuarie. Aegloga Prima.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Iohn Wolfe for Iohn Harrison the yonger, […], →OCLC, folio 2, recto
    • Yet, trust me, Memory's warmest sighs / Are often breathed in moments lorn— / And many a feeling thought will rise / And in the bosom die unborn.1857, Gerald Griffin, “Addressed to a Friend”, in The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Gerald Griffin, Duffy: James Duffy 7 Wellington Quay, →OCLC, stanza VII, page 159

Proper noun capitalized: Lorn

Lorn

  1. A suburb of Newcastle in the Maitland council area, New South Wales, Australia.

Also used as

lorn is also the past participle of lese.

Forms of lorn

comparativemore lorn
superlativemost lorn

Origin of lorn

From Middle English lorn, loren, ilorn, iloren (past participle of lese, lesen (“to lose, be deprived of; to damn, doom to perdition”)), from Old English *loren, *ġeloren, from Proto-Germanic *galuzanaz, *luzanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *leusaną (“to lose”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewH- (“to cut, sever; to separate; to loosen; to lose”). See further at lese.

Words formed from lorn

Phrases with lorn

Words that rhyme with lorn

25 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lorn

What does lorn mean?
Lorn means doomed; lost.
What part of speech is lorn?
Lorn can be an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lorn?
Lorn is pronounced /lɔːn/ (UK).

Words near lorn in the dictionary

  1. Lormand
  2. Lormands
  3. lormery
  4. lormetazepam
  5. Lormont
  6. lorn
  7. Lorna
  8. Lorne
  9. Lorne sausage
  10. Lorne sausages
  11. lorner

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lorn (page history and authors); Lorn (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: En-au-lorn.ogg.

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