Timeline for Why do you say "air conditioned" and not "conditioned air"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 28, 2022 at 21:38 | comment | added | John Lawler | When I first arrived in Mexico and learned Spanish, it was clear that AA (aire acondicionado, 'conditioned air') was the way it worked. Con AA means the same thing as with AC does in English, so the grammatical details in idioms, while interesting, don't really matter. As for why one and not the other, that's the way it is. Languages don't work the same, any more than people do. | |
| Dec 8, 2020 at 16:31 | comment | added | Criticizing Israel not allowed | @Flater I don't think we mean "conditioned by air". I think we are saying that the air-conditioned by an air-conditioner - the same way that food is refrigerated by a refrigerator, for example. | |
| Dec 8, 2020 at 13:57 | comment | added | Charleh | Also, when it comes to "conditioning" we are talking about temperature control, not cooling/heating. It's thermostatic, hence conditioning, not cooling. You don't call it "cooled air" or "chilled air" because the air-conditioner does way more than just cooling air (even excluding de-humidifying and filtering). It's air-conditioning (hence the term!) | |
| Dec 8, 2020 at 13:55 | comment | added | Charleh | An air-conditioner does air-conditioning on a subject - the building. Because the air-conditioner is doing the work, the building is said to be air-conditioned. The air isn't the subject of the sentence, the building is. If we were talking about the air specifically, we could say it was conditioned air, but the subject is important here. The theatre is "air-conditioned" - people really wouldn't talk about the actual air in the theatre as a subject. | |
| Dec 7, 2020 at 22:05 | comment | added | mjjf | @user3067860 I think maybe people did say that a long long time ago. "Conditioned air" sounds very old-fashioned. Like saying "I'm going to the theatre, it has electric light." | |
| Dec 7, 2020 at 17:17 | comment | added | Darrel Hoffman | @Flater It's interesting that we never really adopted the phrase "cooled air" or "chilled air" as an analog to "heated air". The word "conditioned" doesn't really say specifically what was done to the air the way that "heated" does. | |
| Dec 7, 2020 at 13:42 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | Because we just don't! Since air-conditioning was invented, a particular way of speaking of it has passed into everyday language. | |
| Dec 7, 2020 at 12:06 | comment | added | user3067860 | Can you explain why we would never say, "I'm going to the movie theater, it has conditioned air." even though the logic of that sentence is correct? | |
| Dec 6, 2020 at 9:03 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | I didn't mean to imply that conditioned air couldn't be used, just that it was the wrong word order for describing an indoor environment, which is how air-conditioned is normally used. | |
| Dec 6, 2020 at 2:48 | comment | added | Mazura | I do HVAC and use both depending on which we're talking about: the entire space inside the building envelope (that which is air conditioned), or all of the air inside of the envelope except for what comes from the fresh air intake (because that's not conditioned air... yet). | |
| Dec 6, 2020 at 1:19 | comment | added | gen-ℤ ready to perish | This answer could be improved by mentioning that the apparatus is also called an air conditioner. | |
| Dec 5, 2020 at 22:36 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | *Conditioned air" Describing the air being ejected by a pump as "conditioned" doesn't sound that wrong to me. But +1 because you have a knack for reducing complex ideas in a single sentence or two. | |
| Dec 5, 2020 at 13:21 | history | answered | Kate Bunting | CC BY-SA 4.0 |