The light is off. I turned the light off. Turn the lights off!
vs.
The light is out. I turned the light out. Turn the lights out!
Which do you favor? I find myself using “out” most of the time, but I don’t really know why.
“The light is out” can mean that the light is burned out.
My French-Canadian extended family uses “Open the light” and “Close the light”
I turn the light off.
I blow the candle out, though.
For NFL Monday Night Football fans from the 1970s, the clear favorite is out. Dandy Don was great with it.
For that I’d specifically say “the light is burned out.”
My Mom and my Grandma, both born and raised in Brooklyn, would say “make out the light.”
I have some vague feeling that “outen the lights” is good, based on having been placed in various foster homes in Amish territory (Lancaster, PA) as a little kid until age 3 or 4. But when I was adopted, my parents worked very hard to eliminate all traces of regionalisms from my vocabulary. So I can’t be sure.
Anyway, I’d probably say “turn out” and “turn off” pretty interchangeably these days.
My mother-in-law, who is from Reading, PA, has a light switch plate which says “Outen the lights”. This is not it, but it’s the same saying.
My dad will often sing the the first lines of this when it’s time to go.
Technically it would be “Turn the switch to the off position.” But few people write or speak that way.
Most of the definitions of “Lights out” refer to a military or other authoritarian command.
It dates back to at least the 1940’s when during WWII when lights out and blackout was ordered in the U.S. following the attack on Pearl Harbor. My parents, who were 12 when it happened, talked about having use blackout their windows at night.
I suspect that turning the light out or turning out the light(s) predates electricity when candles and lanterns were the source of light. Though candles may be more "putting out the light* by snuffing it.
I don’t have an issue with either expression. A problem would arise if when you turn the light off, it doesn’t go out or vice versa .
That expression is what I always heard in the Philippines. And from a number of Koreans speaking English in Korea.
In Chinese, open / close and switch on / switch off (a light) are the same verb. And the noun (a switch) is an “open-close”. Perhaps the local English usage derives from this.
Have never used this form, possibly have never heard that form. (I’ve heard put out the light, but not–I think–outside a deliberate Shakespeare reference.)
I’m not sure which is on or off here. Open the light sort of sounds like on, as in open the curtain, however opening of a lighting circuit would cause the bulb to go out.
Another issue I have is if the lights are on but nobody is home…
But seriously folks, to me my preference is for the first one. Turn the lights off.
With this exception: when the kids were teenagers, at night I would yell Lights Out!!
It’s opening and closing the “channel” that allows the flow of electricity that’s being referred to not the physical circuit.
I’m familiar with the term “lights out” but I think I say “off”. It has a natural opposite: “on”. If you say “turn the lights out” if you want it dark do you say “turn the lights in” when you want light?
But English is weird. “My car alarm was going off, so I had to go out to turn it off”. What? ‘Off’ can mean on and off at the same time?
It depends on whether the music’s over.
It doesn’t matter. Dandy Don died in 2010. He ain’t singin’ no more.
I’ve heard tell of a man who could put out the cat, the wine, his cigar and the lamps.