the.com/loner
Not antisocial — just allergic to small talk and bad company.
means A person who chooses to spend most of their time alone rather than seeking out company.
from A simple 19th-century formation — 'lone' (itself a clipping of 'alone,' which comes from the Old English phrase 'all one,' meaning wholly by oneself) plus the agent suffix '-er.' No hidden story here: it's exactly what it looks like, a word built by snapping two plain pieces together.
- origin
- back-formation from lone, coined early 1900s america
- myth
- often mistaken for lonely, which is involuntary
- reality
- solitude chosen deliberately correlates with higher creativity
- paradox
- can thrive in crowds, just prefers the exit