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say it: looz
lose is a verb meaning "fail to keep or to maintain; cease to have, either physically or in an abstract sense". It is pronounced /ˈluz/ — looz. It carries 10 recorded senses.
suffer the loss of a person through death or removal
“She lost her husband in the war”
“The couple that wanted to adopt the child lost her when the biological parents claimed her”
allow to go out of sight or mind
“The detective lost the man he was shadowing after he had to stop at a red light”
“lose the crowds by climbing a mountain”
“the lost tribe”
fail to make money in a business; make a loss or fail to profit
“I lost thousands of dollars on that bad investment!”
“The company turned a loss after the first year”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for lose come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.