lorn
/lɔɹn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.00 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A suburb of Newcastle in the Maitland council area, New South Wales, Australia.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "The mighty river flowing dark and deep, / With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides / Vague-sounding through the City's sleepless sleep, / Is named the River of the Suicides; / For night by night some lorn wretch overweary, / And shuddering from the future yet more dreary, / Within its cold secure oblivion hides."
- "He never found his beloved machine gun. Lorn and drained-nervous, he was fired next day."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /lɔɹn/
- British English: /lɔːn/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more lorn (comparative)
most lorn (superlative)