letting out the cold

[zhonglin]

Hi folks,

When talking about a room that has air-conditioning in it, is it normal to say "hey please shut the door, you're letting the cold out"?

Please advise.

Thanks!

 

[owlman5]

Hi.

That sounds reasonably normal to me. If I wanted to say roughly the same thing, I would probably phrase it this way: Please shut the door. You're letting all the cool air out.

 

[Chasint]

Hi folks,

When talking about a room that has air-conditioning in it, is it normal to say "hey please shut the door, you're letting the cold out"?

Please advise.

Thanks!

That certainly makes sense. In Britain you would probably get a laugh because (with our climate) we are usually more preoccupied with keeping the cold out!

As a Brit, I would probably say, "You're letting the heat in" or "You're letting the hot air in."

 

[a little edgy]

In AE, we would say either "you're letting the cold out" or "you're letting the heat/hot air in." Colloquially, they mean the same thing, although I have a feeling there's some law of thermodynamics that would that say one or the other (probably "letting the cold out") is scientifically inaccurate.

Interestingly, in the winter one hears "you're letting the cold in" much more often than "you're letting the heat out" ... although fathers have been known to say to their children, "shut the door! Are you trying to heat the whole neighborhood?!" I suppose some father somewhere has expressed the same sort of sentiment in the summer as "shut the door! Are you trying to air-condition the whole neighborhood?!"