On 21/10/2012 13:36, Phil Cook wrote:
On 21/10/2012 13:06, Donna Richoux wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:

On 21/10/12 1:36 AM, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:

ObAUE: Is that drawn meaning open or drawn meaning closed?


Serious question: can "drawn" ever mean the curtains are open? I would
have thought that it had to be "drawn back" or "open" and that "drawn"
always meant they were closed.

However, this one seems to go the other way:

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Page 246

It seems they were closed...

Then he woke up and looked at the light. The curtains were drawn. He
listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the
wood. It would be a brilliant morning, about half past five, his hour
for rising...

She looked round the whitewashed little bedroom with its sloping ceiling
and gable window where the white curtains were closed. The room was bare
save for a little yellow-painted chest of drawers, and a chair: and the
smallish white bed in which she lay with him.

Bad form replying to myself, but if I had included a little more we
would have seen that She would have suggested they draw the curtains to
open them. So the act of opening or closing the curtains is drawing them
but if they are described as drawn I would say they have been closed.
--
Phil Cook