Several famous people were asked what they felt was the saddest word in the English language. Here’s what some of them said,
• Poet T. S. Eliot: “The saddest word in the English language is, of course, ‘saddest.’”
• Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II: “But.”
• Writer John Dos Passos quoted John Keats: “Forlorn! the very word is like a bell.”
• Psychiatrist Karl Menninger: “Unloved.”
• Statesman Bernard M. Baruch: “Hopeless.”
• President Harry Truman quoted John Greenleaf Whittier: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”
• Alexandra Tolstoi: “The saddest word in all languages, which has brought the world to its present condition, is ‘atheism.’” Put all of these answers together and you have a faint picture of a soul without Christ. I think of that word which Keats used so dramatically, “forlorn.” It is the English form of the Dutch word verloren, which means “lost.”
Source: Bible.org under: Lost