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alone

UK/əˈləʊn/US/əˈloʊn/
adjectiveA23 meaningsOne of the most common words in English · #146 of 15,258leans spoken

Alone means there is nobody else there. You come home, the flat is empty, and you eat alone at the kitchen table with the radio on.

It sits after the verb or the noun — she lives alone, the children were alone — and never in front of a noun: 'an alone child' is wrong, say a child on their own. Alone is a fact; lonely is a feeling, and you can be alone all weekend and perfectly happy. Placed after a noun or pronoun it means only that one: she alone knew the code, the rent alone eats half his wages. Let alone is the phrase to learn — he can't boil an egg, let alone cook dinner — while leave me alone means stop bothering me, and go it alone means doing it without help.

Definitions of alone

  1. 1adjectivealoneWith nobody else present.A2~11%

    “He was alone in the office by seven o'clock.”

    synonyms: by yourself, on your own

  2. 2adverbsingleWithout help from anyone else.B1~2%

    “She raised three children alone.”

    synonyms: single-handedly, unaided

  3. 3adverbnothingOnly that one thing or person and nothing more, placed after the noun or pronoun.B2~87%

    “The cost of the flights alone came to a thousand pounds.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

  • let alone — and certainly not, used to show the second thing is even less likely
  • leave someone alone — to stop bothering or disturbing them
  • go it alone — to do something without help from anyone else

Where it comes from

Alone is two words that grew together: Old English eall ān, 'all one', which became al oon in Middle English and then allone. The word once said exactly what it means — completely one, one and nothing else. One later shifted its pronunciation and alone did not, which is why the pair no longer sound like relatives.

  1. Middle English

    allone

  2. English, today

    alone

Built from

  • eall ān · Old English — completely alone

From Middle English allone. From Middle English allone, from earlier all oon literally “all one”, contracted from the Old English - phrase eall ān (“completely alone”), equivalent to al- + one. Cognate with Scots alane (“alone”), stq alleene (“alone”), West Frisian allinne (“alone”), Dutch alleen (“alone”), Low German alleen (“alone”), German allein (“alone”), Danish alene (“alone”), Swedish allena (“alone”). More at all and one. For the different phonological development of alone and one, see the note in one.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Adjectives

Practise this word

alone in the wild

  • In tabletop role-playing games, they might take the form of a campaign setting or a stand-alone adventure for players to experience.

    Expansion pack

  • Overall, 72.1% of Americans identify as White either alone or in combination with one or more other racial groups.

    White Americans

  • Soli Deo gloria (S.D.G.) is a Latin term for Glory to God alone.

    Soli Deo gloria

  • Madonna did a performance of the song alone on stage on her Re-Invention World Tour in 2004.

    Nobody Knows Me

  • The employment of LSOs is the responsibility of the service alone, and is independent of the Civil Service of Singapore.

    Singapore Legal Service

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.