lovelorn
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of lovelorn
Explanation
When you're lovelorn, you feel sad or hopeless about love. Sometimes people are lovelorn when the person they love doesn't love them back. You could be lovelorn because of unrequited love, loving someone who's unavailable or who simply doesn't feel the same way; or lovelorn from the loss of love. A lovelorn poet might write a melancholy sonnet, and a lovelorn teenager might listen to sad songs and cry in his room. The poet John Milton is often credited with coining lovelorn, a combination of love and lorn, a very old-fashioned way to say "lost" or "ruined."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Branagh remains marvelous as Christie’s most famous sleuth, though like you, Mary, I’ve expressed my share of frustration with these movies’ insistence on giving us Emo Poirot, Lovelorn Poirot and Existentially Tormented War Veteran Poirot.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 13, 2023
Lovelorn men in India are trying a new strategy: calling numbers at random until they hear a woman’s voice.
From New York Times • Mar. 22, 2017
Demolition Derbies for Lovelorn True love may be everlasting, but it’s not very funny.
From New York Times • Sep. 24, 2012
As a result, the book is a kind of uneasy cross between Poor Richard's Almanack and a Lorelei's Advice to the Lovelorn.
From Time Magazine Archive
Lovelorn we look on beauty: no blush now answers to our glance; for cold is our gaze, as the deadened emotions of our heart.
From A Love Story by A Bushman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
