Philip Newton

I can't remember whether "to draw the curtain" means "pull the curtains away from the window so that you can look out" or "pull the curtains together so that the window is covered".

dictionary.com, quoting AHD, says that "draw" means "To move or pull so as to cover or uncover something: draw the curtains." and dict.leo.org translates "to draw the curtain" as both "den Vorhang aufziehen" and "den Vorhang zuziehen".

Can it really have both meanings, then? That is, is "draw the curtains, please" ambiguous, so that you'd have to look at the current state of the curtains to ascertain what it is that is wanted?

This thread on hates-software.com included this bit:

On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 11:28:54PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sep 2005, Peter da Silva wrote:
>
> > ... where you dial an IP address ...
>
> /me whimpers

Would this be like the whimper that a cow-orker suddenly shared with me? He comes to me with a pained look on his face and says "Peter, I need a vacation!" I'm not his boss or anything, so I assume he is here in search of condolences, so I ask him to explain. Apparently, he had just picked up the phone to call another cow-orker, dialed '1', '9', '2', and caught himself wondering whether the dot should be dialed as '*' or '#'.

which made someone else respond with

"Thank you for dialing the Microsoft IP address. If you want to download a file, press 21. If you want to leave a message, press 25. If you want to view a web page, press 80. If you..."