SOLITARINESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does solitariness mean? 

• SOLITARINESS (noun)
  The noun SOLITARINESS has 2 senses:

1. the state of being alone in solitary isolation

2. a disposition toward being alone

  Familiarity information: SOLITARINESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SOLITARINESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being alone in solitary isolation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

loneliness; solitariness

Hypernyms ("solitariness" is a kind of...):

isolation (a state of separation between persons or groups)

Derivation:

solitary (lacking companions or companionship)

solitary (of plants and animals; not growing or living in groups or colonies)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A disposition toward being alone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

aloneness; loneliness; lonesomeness; solitariness

Hypernyms ("solitariness" is a kind of...):

disposition; temperament (your usual mood)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "solitariness"):

friendlessness (being without friends)

reclusiveness (a disposition to prefer seclusion or isolation)

Derivation:

solitary (characterized by or preferring solitude)

 Context examples 

The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape the solitariness and the melancholy of so altered a village, and be out of the way when Admiral and Mrs Croft first arrived, she had determined to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Anne.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Sir Thomas's sending away his son seemed to her so like a parent's care, under the influence of a foreboding of evil to himself, that she could not help feeling dreadful presentiments; and as the long evenings of autumn came on, was so terribly haunted by these ideas, in the sad solitariness of her cottage, as to be obliged to take daily refuge in the dining-room of the Park.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)