forlorn

adj

1. Abandoned, deserted, left behind.

   “For miſerie doth braueſt mindes abate, / And make them ſeeke for that they wont to ſcorne, / Of fortune and of hope at once forlorne.”

   “Some ſay that Rauens foſter forlorne children, / The vvhilſt their ovvne birds famiſh in their neſts: / Oh be to me though thy hard hart ſay no, / Nothing ſo kinde but ſomething pittifull.”

   “More join us at Colwall and at the lovely station at Great Malvern, although the place is in need of some TLC nowadays. The ornate canopy supports are overdue a repaint, and the closed cafe gives the place a forlorn air.”

   “There are few sights that leave a railway lover more wistful than a desolate railway viaduct no longer carrying tracks. As with tunnels, so much effort was made to conquer the landscape, yet so many now stand forlorn.”

2. Pitifully sad, wretched, miserable; lonely, especially from feeling abandoned, deserted, forsaken.

   “For here forlorn and loſt I tread, / With fainting ſteps and ſlow; / Where wilds immeaſurably ſpread, / Seem lengthening as I go.”

   “This is the Maiden all forlorn, That milked the Cow with the crumpled Horn[.]”

   “The condition of the besieged, in the mean time, was forlorn in the extreme; not so much from want of food, though their supplies were scanty, as from excessive toil and exposure.”

   “Sweet are familiar songs, tho' Music dips / Her hollow shell in Thought's forlornest wells: / And sweet, tho' sad, the sound of midnight bells, / When the oped casement with the night-rain drips.”

3. Unlikely to succeed; hopeless.

   “To begin therefore with Traditions, which is your forlorn hope that in the first place we are to set upon: this must I needs tell you before we begin, that you much mistake the matter, if you think that traditions of all sorts promiscuously are struck at by our religion.”

   “Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark.”

   “Mrs. Blair had lost her husband, who was a cavalry officer, in Cabool, at the memorable Khyber Pass; but as no precise tidings of his death had every been received, she cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living in captivity among the Affghans, and that some day it would be her happiness yet to be reunited with him, even on earth.”

   “Now he rushed to the platform edge carrying a full fire bucket, in a forlorn attempt to douse the flames as the now brightly burning wagon rolled past.”

noun

1. A forlorn hope.

   “[…] I ordered the forlorns to advance and to march, at their open order, towards the upland, and by this time the tide was upon the ground wee ſtood on: The forlorn were no ſooner advanced a few rods, before there was firing on both ſides; […]”

   “I was this day in the van, and our forlorn having entered Huntingdon without any great reſiſtance till they came to the bridge, finding it barricaded, they ſent me word; I cauſed the troops to halt, and rode up to the forlorn, to view the countenance of the enemy, and found by the poſture they had put themſelves in, that they reſolved to ſell us the paſſage as dear as they could.”

   “The garrison, taken by surprise, had the first intelligence of the assault in the "forlorns plunging into the canal."”

2. A member of a forlorn hope.

verb

1. (form-of, obsolete, participle, past)past participle of forlese.