I did Google it but am not getting a definitive answer from the likes of Yahoo Answers et al (quelle surprise). So does “ten below”, for example, mean below freezing or below zero Fahrenheit? Obviously “ten below freezing” should mean 22F, but often people seem to just say “[some number] below”.
Below zero, of course.
Ten degrees below 0F.
Below zero. If it’s between zero and 32 out there, you’d probably just say “It’s below freezing.”
And if you wanted to say “ten below freezing,” you’d just say “22 degrees” or maybe just “20 degrees.” Heck, I guess some people might even say “20 above.”
As a direct answer, “10 below” in Fahrenheit is “23 below” in Celsius.
That means it’s February in Minnesota.
Nobody refers to 22 degrees as ten below, nobody.
Ten below is -10 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 10 degrees below zero (0).
OK. It didn’t seem that obvious to me because I speculated that perhaps, under a system in which the freezing point is not zero, it might be useful to give temperatures relative to freezing rather than leaving people to do the mental arithmetic of “shit, that’s twenty-five degrees below freezing” or whatever. I guess I’m just used to a system in which things are always relative to the freezing point.
We don’t need to do any mental arithmetic. We’ve had this system our whole lives and it’s second nature to us. We know without consciously thinking about it that when the temperature is below 32 it’s below freezing, when it is significantly below 32 it is “wicked cold” and when it is below 0 it is “f-ing cold.” HTH
The construction “ten below” sounds uniquely North American to me. We wouldn’t say that in the UK, we’d say “minus ten” and mean -10C.
That’s just kooky-talk. Thank god we got shut of you whackos.
Shut it, pilgrim.
Temperature is such an ingrained part of our experience that we really don’t need any specific indicator of relativeness to freezing. We don’t need to figure out that 10 below is 25 degrees below freezing. 10 below is 10 below.
North American - I’ve never heard anyone, even once, say “ten below” when they were talking about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. I also don’t know anyone who bothers doing any math to figure out how far below freezing “ten below” would work out to be. Thirty-two degrees, twenty-two degrees, and ten below don’t really relate to each other. They all occupy distinct points on our mental scale which goes something like:
Freezing
Cold
Really Cold
Really Fucking Cold
Zero
Below Zero
Ridiculously Cold
Witches’ Tits.
In general, I would say North Americans don’t really care what the actual thermometer says - we’re more interested in the what the weatherman says about windchill factor or the humidity, probably because those are more extreme numbers.
If there’s any halfway logical complaint about Celsius, I figure it’s this: “zero” under that scale isn’t nearly as cold as most of us have experienced under normal weather conditions. But 0F probably is. If it’s zero degrees Fahrenheit, you know it’s f__kn cold!
Ah, or May in Minnesota.
I’ll stop now.
Yeah, 32F isn’t all that cold in the winter, but 0F is. Things don’t really feel all that cold until they hit 20F.
Jeez, I wasn’t trying to attack the American way of life. Just explaining why, from the perspective of someone accustomed to a freezing-point-based system, it seemed a reasonable possibility that “ten below” meant “below freezing”.
I don’t think anyone took it that way? I sure didn’t.
Though I’m American, seeing as I’m living on a !@#%# humid subtropical island at the end of !!@@#$|<ing July, I’m quite accustomed to reading the temperature in Celsius. I don’t even want to think about what the temperature “really” is in Fahrenheit.