Revisiting ‘oneliness’. History shows we need a more nuanced language for the ‘modern epidemic’ of loneliness.

Before 1800 people didn’t talk about loneliness. Its emergence as a term and concept resulted from the changes associated with modernity: urbanisation, industrialisation, secularism and the emergence of a distinct form of individualism in art, philosophy, politics and culture.

What people did talk about before 1800 was ‘oneliness’. Oneliness meant the quality of being alone, without any associated emotional lack. It was akin to the modern state of solitude, which has largely fallen out of favour. Yes, excessive solitude could be unhealthy, but it was difficult to ever be alone when God was a certain presence.

Solitude was also linked to relaxation, much as it is today. Even when solitude turned into loneliness, it remains a powerful force for self-understanding and creativity (as for Virginia Woolf and May Sarton, whose stories I explore in A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion).

Yes, loneliness can be dreadful, especially when enforced. But it can also be a source of contentment and contemplation. Oneliness is a more mellifluous term than ‘solitude’, and it isn’t attached to the lack associated with ‘loneliness’. We need more nuanced language to address a 21st-century ‘epidemic’. So let’s bring oneliness back.