Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

solitary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Remove ads

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English solitarie, borrowed from Latin sōlitārius. Doublet of solitaire.

Noun

solitary (countable and uncountable, plural solitaries)

  1. (countable) One who lives alone, or in solitude; an anchorite, hermit or recluse.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:recluse
    • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 24:
      He brooded and intrigued fantastically. He was becoming one of the big-time solitaries. And he wasn't meant to be a solitary. He was meant to be in active life, a social creature.
    • 2003, “Weak and Powerless”, performed by A Perfect Circle:
      Tilling my own grave to keep me level
      Jam another dragon down the hole
      Digging to the rhythm and the echo of a solitary siren
      One that pushes me along and leaves me so
      Desperate and ravenous
  2. (uncountable) Ellipsis of solitary confinement.
    The prisoners who started the riot were moved to solitary.
  3. (uncountable) The state of being solitary; solitude
    • 1995, Alanis Morissette, “All I Really Want”, in Jagged Little Pill:
      You must wonder why I'm relentless and all strung out/I'm consumed by the chill of solitary
Translations

Adjective

solitary (not comparable)

  1. Living or being by oneself; alone; having no companion present
    Synonyms: by oneself, on one's own
    • 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8839, archived from the original on 12 November 2020, page 55:
      The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.
    • 2014 February 14, Bonnie Tsui, “The Self-Reflecting Pool”, in The New York Times‎, archived from the original on 15 August 2021:
      Though we don’t all reach nirvana when we swim, swimming may well be that last refuge from connectivity — and, for some, the only way to find the solitary self.
  2. Performed, passed, or endured alone.
    Synonym: solo
    a solitary journey
    a solitary life
  3. Not much visited or frequented; remote from society
    Synonyms: deavely, lonely, unfrequented, unvisited
    a solitary residence or place
  4. Not inhabited or occupied; without signs of inhabitants or occupation; desolate; deserted
    Synonyms: peopleless, wasteful; see also Thesaurus:uninhabited
    the solitary desert
    • 1769, Bible (King James Version), Lamentations 1.1
      How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
    • 1931, Francis Beeding, “1/1”, in Death Walks in Eastrepps:
      Eldridge closed the despatch-case with a snap and, rising briskly, walked down the corridor to his solitary table in the dining-car.
  5. Gloomy; dismal, because of not being inhabited.
    Synonyms: desolate, bleak; see also Thesaurus:cheerless
  6. Single; individual; sole.
    Synonyms: lone, singular; see also Thesaurus:sole
    a solitary example
    • 1961 November, H. G. Ellison, P. G. Barlow, “Journey through France: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, page 668:
      On once more we swung, bumping uneasily along in the antique narrow-gauge coach, with gloomy woods and gathering night outside, shouts and songs (and quacks) inside—this was not at all the sort of train ordained by the logical strategists in Paris—then grinding to a stop at a mysterious halt which was no more than a nameboard in the pinewoods, without even a footpath leading to it, but nevertheless with a solitary passenger stolidly waiting.
    • 2018 December 1, Tom Rostance, “Southampton 2 - 2 Manchester United”, in BBC Sport‎:
      That makes it almost half a season with just a solitary win, and Mark Hughes' side will reflect on a costly capitulation at the end of the first half after fine goals from Stuart Armstrong and Cedric Soares had seemingly put them in control.
  7. (botany) Not associated with others of the same kind.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

solitary

  1. Archaic form of solitaire (“Rodrigues solitaire”).

Anagrams

Remove ads

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads