SOLITUDE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does solitude mean? 

• SOLITUDE (noun)
  The noun SOLITUDE has 3 senses:

1. a state of social isolation

2. the state or situation of being alone

3. a solitary place

  Familiarity information: SOLITUDE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SOLITUDE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of social isolation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

purdah; solitude

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

isolation (a state of separation between persons or groups)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The state or situation of being alone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

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

isolation (a state of separation between persons or groups)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A solitary place

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

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

place; spot; topographic point (a point located with respect to surface features of some region)

 Context examples 

I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits will not bear solitude.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words impressed themselves on my mind and I remembered them afterwards in solitude.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You will do your best work in solitude, so it seems you may be working on a project that holds a great deal of importance to you.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

How can we be for ever together—sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage tribes—and unwed?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Is he safe only in solitude?

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the parlour to give way in solitude to the concern and alarm which this sudden departure occasioned.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

If those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart, I did not know it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Not a man, not a sail, upon the sea; the very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This was Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)