In the context of window coverings someone asks you to “draw the blinds” in another room. Neither you nor they know whether the blinds are currently open permitting light and sight through, or are closed preventing light and sight through.
What is being asked of you?
Close the blinds so light/sight is prevented through the window.
Open the blinds so light/sight is permitted through the window.
However you find the blinds, change them to the opposite; open → closed or closed → open.
I have no idea what “Draw the blinds” means. Sounds quaint though.
Something else I’ll explain in greater detail below …
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This question is occasioned by an email from our apartment’s property management company. They are infamous for emails about problems or upcoming events which only make sense given the mental context of the office worker and facts known only to them, not to the residents.
They’re now making incomprehensible requests about window blinds. In the course of trying to decode their latest mysterious missive I realized I don’t actually know which way is “drawing” a blind? I can make a decent argument for any of my poll choices.
I could be totally wrong here – or dialects may differ on this point – but to me “drawing the blinds” means to close them to block light/sight. But dictionaries seem to suggest that in this context, “draw” is being used in the sense of motion, “to pull”, as in “the train drew into the station”, so technically it could mean to either open or close the curtains, although I’d maintain that this sense tends to suggest pulling curtains together rather than apart. If you read about some weary lost traveler approaching a farmhouse and observing that “all the blinds were drawn”, what does that make you think the condition of the blinds is?
I tend to use “open” and “close” in referring to window coverings to avoid that sort of ambiguity.
I’ve always thought it means to close the curtains. But upon reading the OP’s question, I actually started second-guessing myself. But, yes, I think my first instinct is correct. At any rate, if someone asked me to “draw the blinds” I guess I would just toggle the current state of the blinds: if open, close; if close, open. But I voted “close.”
The default state of blinds is open. If one asks to draw them, one is asking to put them in a state other than their default. The only way I would interpret “draw the blinds” to mean opening them would be if the asker and I were both in the room and could clearly see that they were already closed.
Though I agree that “close the blinds” would be clearer and less reliant on idiom.
I’ve only really encountered the term used in the context of curtains (I understand it applies to blinds too, it’s just that curtains are much more common than blinds where I live). I understand it to mean toggle them - that is, open them if closed, close them if open - and I think this is just because ‘draw’ means ‘pull’, which is more or less the action required to do either opening or closing of curtains.
FYI my confused take on “draw the blinds” as potentially meaning “open the blinds” was by analogy to “draw the sting” and other similar idiomatic uses where “draw” is essentially a short form of “withdraw” or remove. If one was asked to “withdraw the blinds” or “remove the blinds” one would certainly open them permitting sight/light…
And as @Mangetout just said, there’s also a reasonable interpretation that “draw” means “drag”, as in pull them from how they are to the other way they could be.
Overall I find “draw the blinds” or “draw the curtains” to be something my grandmothers might have said. And they’d be 120 or 135 if they were still alive. Archaic in the extreme. Although that too may simply be a difference of national, regional, and class dialect.
I want to argue with this, just because I like to argue.
If you don’t have blinds (or other window coverings) then the view/light passes through, i.e. the window is open to view and light. Therefore if one adds blinds to a window, they can only have the purpose of at least sometimes blocking the light and the view. So I would argue that closed is the default state of blinds and any other window coverings, because that is their purpose.
To the OP, if I were in a building whose management company habitually made incomprehensible emails, I would attempt to form, with any of my neighbors who also felt the way I do, a select committee to respond to such emails (replying to all) with requests for more clarity, both specifically in this case, and generally for all the mystery expressions they use. I don’t believe in suffering in silence.
Maternal grandmother, who lived in an oversized house considered that drawing the blinds a twice daily task whose purpose changed with the seasons.
In the winter you drew the blinds to warm the house.
In summer you drew the blinds to cool the house.
“Draw” means to move something by pulling. A horse draws a cart by pulling on it. You might draw water from a well by pulling up the bucket. You might draw a gun by pulling it out of the holster. Even drawing a picture is done by pulling a pencil over the page. Draw a crowd, draw lots, draw a bowstring, draw a card, all mean to move by pulling. All these senses come from the same Old English root. To draw a curtain is to move it to one side by pulling.
You can draw curtains open, or you can draw them closed.
The meaning is usually clear from context. If the curtains are open, then “draw the curtains” means to close them. If the curtains are closed, “draw the curtains” means to open them. I have frequently heard draw to mean open.
