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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
forlorn
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a vain/forlorn hope (=hope for something that is impossible)
▪ He traveled south in the vain hope of finding work.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
hope
▪ For Coulthard, the prospect of posting a third successive Silverstone win looks a forlorn hope at best after another disappointing race.
▪ But these outcasts of the consumer boom have learned to make even a forlorn hope go a long way.
▪ Well, it had been a forlorn hope at best.
▪ Even they realise, however, that the real world makes that an increasingly forlorn hope.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A forlorn line of refugees stood near the truck.
▪ The banners and ribbons looked forlorn in the rain.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But they are wrong to be so forlorn.
▪ From a place on the shady side I watched the most forlorn spectacle I have ever seen.
▪ It was a forlorn sight to see that troupe passing through our lines at such a time.
▪ Locals pile garbage beside the forlorn visitors center.
▪ The reporters have dispersed, and the two of them actually look somewhat forlorn when I come by.
▪ With the modernisation of the railway system, Brooke End signal box was abandoned, its structure left to stand forlorn.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Forlorn

Forlorn \For*lorn"\, a. [OE., p. p. of forlesen to lose utterly, AS. forle['o]san (p. p. forloren); pref. for- + le['o]san (in comp.) to lose; cf. D. verliezen to lose, G. verlieren, Sw. f["o]rlora, Dan. forloren, Goth. fraliusan to lose. See For-, and Lorn, a., Lose, v. t.]

  1. Deserted; abandoned; lost.

    Of fortune and of hope at once forlorn.
    --Spenser.

    Some say that ravens foster forlorn children.
    --Shak.

  2. Destitute; helpless; in pitiful plight; wretched; miserable; almost hopeless; desperate.

    For here forlorn and lost I tread.
    --Goldsmith.

    The condition of the besieged in the mean time was forlorn in the extreme.
    --Prescott.

    She cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living.
    --Thomson.

    A forlorn hope [D. verloren hoop, prop., a lost band or troop; verloren, p. p. of verliezen to lose + hoop band; akin to E. heap. See For-, and Heap.] (Mil.), a body of men (called in F. enfants perdus, in G. verlornen posten) selected, usually from volunteers, to attempt a breach, scale the wall of a fortress, or perform other extraordinarily perilous service; also, a desperate case or enterprise.

    Syn: Destitute, lost; abandoned; forsaken; solitary; helpless; friendless; hopeless; abject; wretched; miserable; pitiable.

Forlorn

Forlese \For*lese"\, v. t. [p. p. Forlore, Forlorn.] [OE. forlesen. See Forlorn.] To lose utterly. [Obs.]
--haucer.

Forlorn

Forlorn \For*lorn"\, n.

  1. A lost, forsaken, or solitary person.

    Forced to live in Scotland a forlorn.
    --Shak.

  2. A forlorn hope; a vanguard. [Obs.]

    Our forlorn of horse marched within a mile of the enemy.
    --Oliver Cromvell.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
forlorn

mid-12c., forloren "disgraced, depraved," past participle of obsolete forlesan "be deprived of, lose, abandon," from Old English forleosan "to lose, abandon, let go; destroy, ruin," from for- "completely" + leosan "to lose" (see lose). In the Mercian hymns, Latin perditionis is glossed by Old English forlorenisse. OED's examples of forlese end in 17c., but the past participle persisted. Sense of "forsaken, abandoned" is 1530s; that of "wretched, miserable" first recorded 1580s.\n

\nA common Germanic compound (cognates: Old Saxon farilosan, Old Frisian urliasa, Middle Dutch verliesen, Dutch verliezen, Old High German virliosan, German verlieren, Gothic fraliusan "to lose").\n

\nIn English now often in forlorn hope (1570s), which is a partial translation of Dutch verloren hoop, in which hoop means "troop, band," literally "heap," and the sense of the whole phrase is of a suicide mission. The phrase more often than not is used in English as if it meant "a faint hope, and the misuse has colored the meaning of forlorn. Related: Forlornly; forlornness.

Wiktionary
forlorn
  1. 1 abandoned, left behind, deserted. 2 miserable, as when lonely being abandoned. v

  2. (context obsolete English) (past participle of forlese English)

WordNet
forlorn
  1. adj. pitiable in circumstances especially through abandonment; "desolate and despairing"; "left forlorn" [syn: desolate, godforsaken, lorn]

  2. marked by or showing hopelessness; "the last forlorn attempt"; "a forlorn cause"

Wikipedia
Forlorn

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Usage examples of "forlorn".

The dark but cozy common room was half empty, and from the forlorn expressions on the faces of the barkeeper and the serving girls, this was not an anticipated situation.

All was furnished by this lately forlorn party except a leader, and even then many eyes were turned and some hopeful murmurs addressed towards Lord George Bentinck, who in the course of this morning had given such various proofs of his fitness and such evidence of his resource.

Elai watched this business of boatbuilding from the crest of First Tower with a certain forlorn distress.

It was the first of a storm, the tight packed balls flaming and falling as the carcasses were rolled on to the breach, and suddenly the breaches, the ditch, the ravelin, the obstacles, and the tiny figures of the Forlorn Hope were swamped in light, light poured from above, by flames that caught on the obstacles in the ditch, and the Hope began to climb as the fire was bright on their bayonets.

I fancied to myself the rural potentate surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of gamekeepers, huntsmen,, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country clowns.

Bamboohatted Kim returned to the village forlorn of countenance, wearing his empty hat instead of carrying it before him laden with carp and corbina, he was jeered by the lazy ones, including the apple-cheeked wench.

Dashing with about thirty men to an open ground, which his quick eye had observed in his progress down the street, and dealing destruction with every blow, the dreaded Governor of Hamadan, like a true soldier, awaited an inevitable fate, not wholly despairing that some chance might yet turn up to extricate him from his forlorn situation.

One of these forlorn Objects lay buried under a miserable covering of straw, without a blanket or even a horsecloth to defend her from the cold.

Von Kharkov could only lurch on as the forlorn shadows of the graveyard slid past, the tendrils of fog that drifted among the stones a tantalizing reminder of his still-distant goal.

Magdalen then so old and forlorn, who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalen herself was now.

This, the reader will easily suppose, was no other than the remembrance of the forlorn Monimia, whose image appeared to his fancy in different attitudes, according to the prevalence of the passions which raged in his bosom.

Cold, spectral blue bolts of sky fire, followed by distant reverberant thunder, as if somebody were playing ninepins with asteroids for balls and dry, forlorn planets for pins.

She had rented the sportiest thing she could find, which was, in this case, a red Mustang convertible with a white roof, which looked a little forlorn as it pulled up through the dark winter night.

It was an enterprising, swashbuckling sort of mouth, the mouth of one who would lead forlorn hopes with a jest or plot whimsically lawless conspiracies against convention.

Kith-Kanan still remembered his one tusklike tooth bobbing up and down in a forlorn gesture of farewell.