On 15/11/12 3:06 AM, Iain Archer wrote:
The Nomad wrote on Mon, 22 Oct 2012
On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:07:49 +0100, Janet Tweedy wrote:

In article , Lewis
writes
I thought 'draw the curtains' meant "open them", but drawn curtains
were
closed.


Oh now i would think "draw the curtains" meant close them.

FWIIW

In my family it can mean either - you workout which, based on the current
state.

This is one of those words that I feel I never certainly remember the
meaning of, probably because I've included in my mental encoding, "It's
the opposite of what you think", and then can not remember what it was I
originally thought.

"Draw" means "pull". You draw water from a well; draught beer used to be
pulled up from the cellar by a pump; a draught animal pulls a cart; when
someone looks "drawn", their face is pulled together into lines.

You can pull things in many directions. There is no confusion, but when
people write a bare "the curtains were drawn", they do mean "closed"
unless they write "drawn back" or "drawn aside", when the meaning is
pretty clear anyway.


--
Robert Bannister