lonely vs. lonesome?

[Dennis R. Preston]

I have a tendency to use lonely with +human ("I'm just lonely boy")
and lonesome with -human ("I heard that lonesome whistle blow") to
cite from songs, as folk seem to like to do these days.

The restriction on "lonely" with -human is strongest; for me, a
"lonely whistle" is one longing for company (unlikely); a "lonesome
whistle" is one which evokes lonely feelings in its listeners (like a
"lonesome sight" does in its viewers, etc...).

dInIs



>On 25 Aug 2002, at 21:48, Indigo Som wrote:
>  Is "lonesome" regularly used outside of country or
>>  blues songs?
>>
>>  Thanks,
>>  Indigo
>
>I tend to think of this as a countryish variant, too.  I associate it
>with the writings of Mark Twain. (For example, the opening
>sentence of _A Connecticut Yankee_ is: "It was a soft, reposeful
>summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as
>Sunday.")  I guess this has no bearing on contemporary use of the
>word, but my search of a literature database indicates that it
>showed up in authors who dealt in more "sivilized" subjects as well
>-- Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, James, Wharton, Stevenson,
>Norris, and Gibbon.  Twain had more hits than any individual author
>in the database, though.
>
>Joanne Despres

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
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Michigan State University
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