Raise the Window Down

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Eva Zanzel calling from Fairbanks, Alaska.

Welcome, Eva. What can we do for you?

When I was growing up, we would spend the night at our grandmother’s house sometimes, and on a hot summer day, she might tell us to go into the back bedroom and raise the window down. And we just thought that was the funniest thing, and it would giggle. But I never understood why she said raise the window down. And I’d think about it as I got older, and I thought, well, I wonder if it has anything to do with the type of window. And that’s as far as I got.

Okay.

So when she said raise the window down, she meant open it to let some air in?

To open the window.

Okay.

And where was grandmother’s house?

It was in San Jose, California area, but she was from Texas.

Okay. Okay, good. And have you heard that anywhere else? You’re in Alaska now. I assume you’ve been some other places. Is this just one person this one time?

I only heard my grandmother saying it, but I mentioned it to a friend from Georgia, and I asked, have she ever heard that expression? And she says, oh, yeah. And my great-grandmother, my grandmother’s mother, was from South Carolina. So I’m just wondering if it’s a southern expression or if it really had something to do with the windows.

Yeah, the kind of window.

Martha, you are from Louisville. You have family from North Carolina. As a representative of the South, do you feel like this is part of your vocabulary or something your family said?

No, it reminds me of when my dad would talk in the car about the need to run the glass up.

Run the glass up.

Run the glass up, which meant roll up the window. But no, raise the window down, I never heard.

Yeah, Eva, I see it here and there. I’ve heard it over the years. It is not that common. It is mostly thought to be Southern, especially by Southerners. But I do find examples of raise the window down or raise it down, meaning to open a window, scattered throughout the country in print over the years. It has never been really that common. There is one entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English. And there’s an interesting citation there which has the opposite meaning. Raise the window down appears to mean to close the window, to shut it, to prevent the rain from coming in. And so I’m wondering what you’re wondering.

If there was a particular kind of crank window, I was imagining the, what are those louvered windows called? I forget. There’s a fancy name for those.

Jalousy windows?

Jalousy windows. Sometimes they have the crank on the side where there’s a crank action and the window is closing. And the same crank action will either open it up or close it. But, again, it’s not very much has been done in the dialect studies to find out information about this. Even I don’t know very much about it either. That’s the extent of it.

Yeah, I was wondering if it had to do with, you know, double hung windows where you could open them from the top or the bottom.

Oh, nice.

Oh, that could be. So there’d be some kind of contradiction about what raise and down meant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you wanted to put the window down, what would she say?

I don’t know.

Lower the window up?

I guess the opposite.

Interesting.

I think she might just say close the window.

Close the window.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, I think it’s time to gather some data on this. I know there are people out there who use or have heard raise the window down to mean lower the window, to let the air in, whether in a car or a home. Do call us or email us and let us know who you are and where you are and when you heard it and who said it and what else you think about it.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Eva, we’re going to find out more about this.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care.

Thanks for calling.