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FORLORN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Marked by or showing hopelessness
Example:
a forlorn cause
Classified under:
Similar:
hopeless (without hope because there seems to be no possibility of comfort or success)
Context examples:
He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching until Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternating in his mind.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Thus the unhappy traveller was again forsaken and forlorn; but she took heart and said, “As far as the wind blows, and so long as the cock crows, I will journey on, till I find him once again.”
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
I told him, “that a first or chief minister of state, who was the person I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no other passions, but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it for a lie; nor a lie, but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others, or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which, every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It isn't like you to be forlorn.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em'ly had but newly risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been lying on her lap.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do not know what can be done with it.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
It reminded her of their first forlorn tete-a-tete, on the evening of Mrs. Weston's wedding-day; but Mr. Knightley had walked in then, soon after tea, and dissipated every melancholy fancy.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
