Though humans have experienced the physical symptoms of social isolation since the time of our first ancestors, “loneliness” as a term didn’t enter the English language until the late sixteenth century. When Shakespeare likened his hero in Coriolanus to a “lonely dragon”1 who goes alone and is feared, cut off from kin and friends, and talked about more than he’s truly seen or known, he was describing a different state than “oneliness,” as being alone was more commonly called in Western Europe at the time.
