the.com/loneliness
a crowded room's favorite trick and your body's smoke alarm for missing tribe.
means The painful feeling of being isolated or lacking meaningful connection, whether or not anyone else is actually around.
from Built from "lone" plus the noun-making suffix "-ness." "Lone" itself is a clipped form of "alone," which began as the Middle English phrase "al one" — literally "all one," meaning wholly by oneself. So buried in the word is a tiny arithmetic: a person reduced to a single unit. "Loneliness" is the abstract state of that aloneness, recorded in English from around the 1600s, with "lonely" appearing a little earlier.
Mortality riskRivals smoking fifteen cigarettes daily, per research
Real inflammationTriggers measurable immune and stress responses
Brain mistakeActivates the same regions as physical pain
UK ministryBritain appointed a Minister for Loneliness in 2018
ContagiousSpreads through social networks like a mood virus