Meaning

verb fail to keep or to maintain; cease to have, either physically or in an abstract sense

verb fail to win

verb suffer the loss of a person through death or removal

originFrom Middle English losen, from Old English losian. The modern pronunciation with /uː/ (instead of the /oʊ~əʊ/ that would be expected from Early Modern /ɔː/) is due to conflation with loose.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0