Fellow Lexicographers [was: lonely vs. lonesome?]

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:59 AM -0400 8/27/02, Thomas Paikeday wrote:
>Three of the leading desk dictionaries seem to have conspired to give
>short essays (synonym notes) at ALONE discussing ALONE, DESOLATE,
>FORLORN, LONE, LONELY, LONESOME, SOLITARY.
>
>This loner's question: Do these notes help in the main dictionary
>functions of decoding (getting the meaning of a word) and encoding
>(using it in utterances of one's own)?
>
>For example, if the general meaning of the group is "isolated from
>others" (M-W) and there are two main and two subsidiary senses, how is
>the user (such as a farm-based Minnesotan) going to find out (decode)
>the exact meaning of a common expression like "lonely bachelor" or how
>it is distinguished from "lonesome bachelor"? How is she going to choose
>between the two when on the horns of "lonely/lonesome girl"?
>
Not to mention the no-longer-ranch-based Wyomingite/Texan.  I
noticed, on ABC's World News Tonight tonight, Dick Cheney's
defense--or actually it might have been Rumsfeld's (which would put
it even closer to Tom's farm-based Minnesotan); they're all beginning
to sound alike to me--of the U.S. having to take a "lonesome" action
against Iraq even if the rest of the world opposes us.  The ABC
newscaster then paraphrased him as saying that we might have to take
a "lonely" position.  Sorry my memory of this sequence and
"translation" isn't more precise.  Anyone else catch it?

L