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"The term 'loneliness' first crops up in English around 1800. Before then, the closest word was 'oneliness', simply the state of being alone. As with solitude - from the Latin 'solus' which meant 'alone' - 'oneliness' was not coloured by any suggestion of emotional lack. Solitude or oneliness was not unhealthy or undesirable, but rather a necessary space for reflection with God, or with one's deepest thoughts. Since God was always nearby, a person was never truly alone. Skip forward a century or two, however, and the use of 'loneliness' - burdened with associations of emptiness and the absence of social connection - has well and truly surpassed oneliness. What happened?"