No one in the room? Turn off the ceiling fan, leftenant

Clay is off today. Here’s a column first published June 1, 2008.

Today’s question:

I have a neighbor who has a number of ceiling fans in his home that are running continually during the cooling season, even when there is nobody in the house. I say the ceiling fan is useless if no one is present to benefit from the circulating air. He claims it is still cooling the room. Ah, the endless cycle of the seasons. The bird-that-sings-all-night question. The fence-lizard-pushups question. Now the ceiling-fan question. You’re right, and your energywasting neighbor is wrong. Ceiling fans move air around, but they don’t cool it. Ceiling fans cool you by setting up a breeze to speed the evaporation of moisture off your skin. If you’re not in the room, the ceiling fan is just pushing some air around and burning power.

It’s the same as leaving the lights on in an empty room.

Why do the British pronounce the word “lieutenant” as “lef-tenant?” The word is French, and the French say “loo-tenant,” as do the Americans.

Lieutenant comes from an Old French compound: lieu, meaning “place,” and tenant, meaning “holding.” The idea is that a person with that title could step in and do the job of the person in the next rank up.

The British pronunciation goes back to the 14th and 15th centuries when the word was variously spelled as lieftenant, lyeftenant or luftenant.

One idea is it came from a misreading of “u” as a “v.”

That would give you “lev-tenant” and eventually “lef-tenant.”