seclusion

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Shutting away

Nouns

1. seclusion, privacy; retirement; reclusion, recess; rustication, rus in urbe; solitude; solitariness, isolation; loneness, withdrawal, hermitism, ermitism, anchoritism, voluntary exile, aloofness; inhospitality, inhospitableness; unsociability; quarantine; domesticity. Slang, monking. See obscurity, concealment, unity, asceticism.

2. (isolated place) cell, hermitage; cloister, convent; holy of holies, Most Holy Place, sanctum sanctorum; depopulation, desertion, desolation; desert, wilderness; retreat, refuge (see safety). See abode.

3. recluse, hermit, cenobite, eremite, anchoret, anchorite; St. Anthony; Simeon Stylites; Timon of Athens; solitaire, ruralist, cynic, Diogenes. Informal, lone wolf, loner. See asceticism.

Verbs — be secluded, keep aloof, stand in the background; shut oneself up, creep into a corner, keep to oneself, keep one's own counsel, withdraw; rusticate; sequester, seclude, retire; take the veil, take orders. Slang, go it alone.

Adjectives — secluded, sequestered, retired, private; conventual, cloistered, out of the world; remote, inaccessible, out of the way; snug, domestic, stay at home; unsociable, unsocial, antisocial; inhospitable, solitary; lone, lonely, lonesome; isolated, single; unfrequented, uninhabited, uninhabitable; tenantless; abandoned.

Adverbs — by oneself; in private; in one's shell; in a world of one's own.

Quotations — God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly (Paul Valéry), My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill (Fiona McLeod), We live, as we dream — alone (Joseph Conrad), I want to be alone (Greta Garbo), We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life! (Tennessee Williams), The loneliness of the long-distance runner (Alan Sillitoe), All the lonely people, where do they all come from? (Lennon/McCartney).

Antonyms, see sociality.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

Syn. solitude, aloofness, privacy; see retirement 2 .

See Synonym Study at solitude .

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

isolation, sequestration, segregation, privacy, hiding, shelter, solitude, sanctuary, retreat, quarantine.

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun The act of secluding or the state of being secluded: reclusion, retirement, sequestration. See INCLUDE.