c1374 G. Chaucer tr. Boethius De Consol. Philos. (Cambr.) ii. p. iv. 30 Men do no more fors of the lost than of the hauyinge.

a1387 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (St. John's Cambr.) (1872) IV. 213 For þey schulde defende hem þe manloker for drede of so greet lost [L. metu tanti damni].

1390 J. Gower Confessio Amantis I. 147 Which is of most cost And lest is worth and goth to lost?

c1425 Eng. Conq. Irel. lx. 147 Al thynge vnder hys newe men yede to loste.

1473–4 in Hist. MSS Comm.: 10th Rep.: App. Pt. V: MSS Marquis of Ormonde &c. (1885) 310 in Parl. Papers (C. 4576-I) XLII. 1 He shall..make goode of all the losts that is done.

a1500 ( J. Yonge tr. Secreta Secret. (Rawl.) (1898) 151 Of the lordshupp of Cursid men comyth many lostis and myschefis.

1505 in Hist. MSS Comm.: 10th Rep.: App. Pt. V: MSS Marquis of Ormonde &c. (1885) 391 in Parl. Papers 1884–5 (C. 4576-I) XLII. 1 All such costes, lostes and damages as he shuld sustayne.

1519 W. Horman Vulgaria viii. f. 86 For in that delynge is great lost of tyme.

1671 Woodbury Churchwardens' Accts. (E.D.D.) Collected by vertue of a Briefe for a lost by ffire.

1535 Bible (Coverdale) Psalms cxxvii. 2 It is but lost labour that ye ryse vp early.

1597 W. Shakespeare Richard III ii. ii. 11 It were lost labour, to weepe for one thats lost. View more context for this quotation

1598 Chaucers Dreame in T. Speght Wks. G. Chaucer f. 356/2 It were but paine and lost trauaile.

a1616 W. Shakespeare Othello (1623) v. ii. 276 Do you go backe dismaid? 'Tis a lost feare.

1622 J. Mabbe tr. M. Alemán Rogue ii. 111 My friend..repented himselfe of the lost time and charges, which he had spent in the sute.

1855 E. J. Hopkins & E. F. Rimbault Organ xxxvii. 274 It can never be correctly said that ‘unoccupied space’ in an Organ, within reason, is ‘lost room’.

1889 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Robbery under Arms xv He began..to make up for lost time.

1720 D. Defoe Mem. Cavalier 317 I saw 'twas a lost Game.

1808 W. Scott Marmion vi. xxxiii. 365 In the lost battle, borne down by the flying.

1822 P. B. Shelley Hellas 16 So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day.

1865 M. Arnold Ess. Crit. Pref. p. xix Oxford…Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!

1866 E. A. Pollard (title) The lost cause.

1901 ‘M. Twain’ Speeches (1923) 231 You testify by honoring two of us, once soldiers of the Lost Cause.

1914 Times Lit. Suppl. 7 Aug. 378 Oxford has often been called ‘the home of lost causes’, or, as Mr. Cram puts it, ‘of causes not lost but gone before’.

1933 C. Mackenzie (title) The lost cause. A Jacobite play.

1938 J. Betjeman Oxf. Univ. Chest v. 112 Wytham and Binsey are the less hackneyed of Oxford's lost causes on the edge of Oxford.

1940 C. F. Adams And Sudden Death xvii. 155 Why should I go round championing a lost cause?

1948 D. Wecter in J. G. Kerwin Civil–Military Relationships in Amer. Life 31 Their late adversaries, the United Confederate Veterans, licked their wounds and dwelt lovingly upon the Lost Cause.

1949 D. S. Freeman in B. A. Botkin Treasury Southern Folklore p. viii Perhaps every land that has the tradition of a Lost Cause builds its monuments in a certain sentimental determination and seeks through its memorials both to exemplify and to perpetuate its ideal.

1867 W. H. Smyth & E. Belcher Sailor's Word-bk. Lost day, the day which is lost in circumnavigating the globe to the westward, by making each day a little more than twenty-four hours long.

1860 Eng. & Foreign Mining Gloss. (new ed.) (Cornwall Terms) Lost levels, levels which are not driven horizontally.

1926 E. Hemingway Sun also Rises (title page) ‘You are all a lost generation.’—Gertrude Stein in conversation.

1930 R. Macaulay Staying with Relations iv. 57 I was nineteen when the affair [sc. the war] ended... I belong practically to the Lost Generation.

1939 C. Day Lewis Child of Misfortune ii. i. 146 ‘Ha,’ Alec yelled. ‘We're the Lost Generation.’

1951 E. Paul Springtime in Paris (U.K. ed.) xi. 197 The era of the Lost Generation and the notorious expatriates.

1959 Listener 15 Oct. 616/2 Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and Katherine Anne Porter—members of the so-called ‘lost generation’, strove and strayed on the left banks between the wars.

1969 Times 5 Dec. 7/1 Religion, in one form or another, is frequently a straw to which the lost generation of hippies clings.

1970 D. T. Turner in Z. N. Hurston Mules & Men 11 New York was an exciting place for young black intellectuals and artists during the mid-Twenties. Afro-American culture had been rediscovered... The ‘Lost Generation’ danced wildly to jazz rhythms.

1877 R. W. Raymond Statistics Mines & Mining 421 The movement being continuous and rapid in one direction—so that there is no loss motion [sic].

a1884 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. Suppl. 560/2 Lost Motion, looseness of fitting, incident to wear of parts.

1844 A. W. Kinglake Eothen xxii. 340 The Governor..saw the value which I set upon the lost property.

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. iv. [Calypso] 55 His lost property office secondhand waterproof.

1923 H. C. Bailey Mr. Fortune's Pract. vi. 156 He was only calling on the lost property department to leave a lady's bag.

1941 V. Nabokov Real Life S. Knight (1945) x. 86 She fails to get the..job in the lost property office.

1959 Manch. Guardian 7 Aug. 12/2 A home-made double bass..will be included in a lost property sale.

1971 ‘A. Garve’ Late Bill Smith ii. 49 Everyone with any kind of problem was bringing it to Sue. She was harbour-master, postmaster, nurse, lost property office.

1843 ‘R. Carlton’ New Purchase I. ix. 58 Out come the mole rivers that have burrowed all this time under the earth, and which, when so unexpectedly found are styled out there—‘lost rivers’! And every district of a dozen miles square has a lost river.

1872 R. W. Raymond Statistics Mines & Mining 197 The great ‘lost river’ which bursts out of the vertical side of the cañon of the Snake.

1831 J. M. Peck Guide for Emigrants ii. 136 Scattered over the surface of our prairies are large masses of rock, of granitic formation, roundish in form, usually called by the people lost rocks... These stones are denominated boulders in mineralogy.

1857 Trans. Illinois State Agric. Soc. 1856–7 2 347 Another curiosity is the boulders, or ‘lost rocks’, as they are frequently called, which are found on the surface of the earth in the middle and northern sections of Illinois.

1881 Amer. Naturalist 15 178 As vernacular names of definite application, the following are on record: Hump-back, gorbuscha,..lost salmon.

1819 H. McMurtrie Sketches of Louisville 29 [Certain stones] in the Illinois and Missouri territories are denominated lost-stones, from their being strangers to the soil where they are found.

1933 H. F. Lenz Alfred David Lenz Syst. Lost Wax Casting 9 The modeling wax for casting in the ‘cire perdue’ or ‘lost wax’ method has several requirements.

1947 J. C. Rich Materials & Methods Sculpt. vi. 146 The ‘lost-wax’ or cire-perdue process is the traditional method of casting in bronze... The ancient Egyptians employed the lost-wax method, casting over ash cores.

1972 Times 28 Sept. 18/6 The bronzes were made by the lost-wax process in which the mould is destroyed.

1944 C. Jackson (title) Lost weekend.

1947 M. McCarthy in Partisan Rev. May 303 It was..comic that a man should have one name..for his wife..and another..for trips and ‘lost’ week ends.

1955 A. Koestler Trail of Dinosaur 56 He is the classic type who becomes addicted to the Communist drug, and never finds his way back from the lost weekend in Utopia.

1960 K. Amis Take Girl like You xix. 229 I quite expected to find you on the couch this morning, especially after your lost-weekend act.

1968 A. MacLeod Dam iii. 32 I'll have to go down to the pub and replenish the stock... And that will mean another bloody lost weekend.

1969 ‘E. Lathen’ Come to Dust iii. 34 He seems to feel that if Patterson emerges from some lost weekend, the press will seize on his connection with Neil Marsden.

1975 M. Kenyon Mr Big vii. 65 The Express used one paragraph headed Lost Weekend.