yagu's Journal: what's your interpretation?

Recently while cooking dinner a friend asked me to turn the oven down to 350 degrees. I approached the oven, and saw the dial/thermostat already set to 300 degrees. The ensuing discussion was lively.

How would you have interpreted and acted on the instructions?

ah, regional colloquialisms

[mskfisher]

"Down" means "less" to me. Therefore, you'd want to check to make sure the person didn't mean 250.
Now, if the word "down" was omitted, "turn the oven to 350" would have made perfect sense.

One of my favorites here (I'm in Minneapolis, but I think the saying is imported from the Dakotas) is "I'll borrow you [x]."
No you won't, you'll lend me the item, and I'll borrow it from you. :P

Myself, I would...

[dexterpexter]

Well, if the oven were set to 400 and someone told me to set the oven "down" to 350, in context I would think that they wanted me to decrease the temperature to 350 degrees.

If the oven were set to 300 and someone told me to set the oven "down" to 350, I would assume that they meant that, since the knob is turned to the right to increase temperature, you are actually turning the knob in a downward rotation, and would have set the oven to 350 (increasing temperature, but moving the top of the knob downward.)