To think it is posh and or pretentious to say you are "drawing" a bath?

[OonaStubbs]

What do you think. My DP always says this but I think it is very strange and old fashioned to say this instead of just saying you are running a bath?

This is my favourite post of the month😂

I often remark that after my night cap, I will draw a bath before I retire upstairs to my chamber with my mistress for a night of amorous congress.

If its what you always heard growing up then it's just your normal. Nothing pretentious about it.

Not at all, it's correct grammar, I still use terms which could be deemed old-fashioned, wireless, lavatory, squire (courting), flibbertigibbet, etc;

None of those are grammatical usages, though -- just vocabulary.

This is not a class thing - it’s an old fashioned thing but not a posh old fashioned thing. I’ve never heard anyone posh and old do anything other than run their own baths. And the only people I’ve heard referring to drawing a bath are those who have either pored over the Sloane Ranger handbook and Brideshead like they’re studying for a degree in how to pretend to be smart - or are not young and doing it for someone else. If you were Jeeves you might draw Wooster’s bath but Wooster would run his own.

I was once charged with being pretentious by a South African colleague for saying "we ate it for supper". He said "my wife's English and she calls it dinner"

Dinner is at noon, tea is at 5pm and supper is jam and bread just before you go to bed. Doesn't have to be jam and bread. Could just be toast or a bowl of custard or whatever bedtime snack takes your fancy. That was the norm growing up in the North. I had a hard enough time getting used to calling an evening meal 'dinner' and I still can't say it without feeling pretentious.
Now I have a posh friend who calls it 'supper' and that's even worse. I can't see myself ever being able to invite anyone for supper, ever. Not unless they pop round at 11pm in their pyjamas.

If you were Jeeves you might draw Wooster’s bath but Wooster would run his own.

That is well summarised I think. Op, you better throw this one back: I think you've pulled an average bloke!

A supper invite is supposed to suggest it won't be fancy. Not second rate, but just not fussy. Maybe lasagne followed by fresh strawberries and ice-cream. It's a more homely kind of invitation. I don't think it is intended to be pretentious.

But many of you would find me pretentious because I cannot bear the use of "invite" as a noun.

It’s a completely normal turn of phrase. People are such weird snobs. Nothing wrong with supper or asking anyone how they take their tea either,

But many of you would find me pretentious because I cannot bear the use of "invite" as a noun

Quite. It's an invitation, not an invite. But you used it here?

A supper invite is supposed to suggest it won't be fancy

Interesting . I say ‘run’ the bath but ‘draw’ the curtains.

I suppose it’s like ‘toilet’ versus ‘lavatory’.

I’ve never heard anyone posh and old do anything other than run their own baths

Maybe posh and old people who had actual bathrooms in their house growing up might run a bath. I was 14 years old before I lived in a house with an actual bathroom.
We had a tin bath leaned up against the wall in the cellar, brought out and filled up with water drawn from the "geyser" which wasn't in the kitchen because we didn't have one. It was in the corner of the living room over the sink.

It's only when you have a bath with taps and free running hot water that you can 'run' a bath. There was no hot water tank, no immersion heater. The hot water had to be 'drawn' from the gas geyser, the only hot water available in the house. It took bloody aaaaages. Prob why we only got one bath a week.

And I'm in my late 60s so not ancient. That's probably why 'drawing a bath' seems not very posh to me at all. Quite the opposite. I suppose in my childhood running a bath would have been posh.

I HATE to say this, as it makes me feel a hundred years old, but Chandler probably said draw a bath about 30 years ago, so….

Yes, I was trying to be unpretentious! But it feels so wrong...

I prefer ‘gaol’. It’s evocative of the influence of Elizabeth Fry and her influence on the 1823 Gaols Act in England & Wales which made it law to have separate areas for men and women in mixed prisons, and to have women guards for women prisoners.

I still spell jail as gaol too, which flummoxes a surprising number of people

I've always spelt it gaol. I thought jail was an American influence.

I like nice words and using them is fun. My grandma used to ask if anyone would like an intoxicant when she was offering a sherry, so that's what we say sometimes. It makes us all laugh (I know, what japes)

My mother would also say "has everyone had ample sufficiency" after a meal. I like using her phrases, they remind me of her.

Yes, but it’s the necessity of specifying that suggests higher echelons of invitation being available at other times ie ‘kitchen supper’ or ‘kitchen sups’ implying informality and two courses below stairs rather than a full scale dinner party. (And of course a certain type of host invites you for kitchen sups, and get get there in jeans expecting lasagne and salad to discover you’re eating grouse with men in dinner jackets.)

Yes. Vocabulary , not grammar. An antiquated word used self consciously which suggests pretension. I’d give them a sheet of plain paper and a pencil…

Bit mean to criticise him, OP. It’s a perfectly normal (and grammatically correct) turn of phrase.

But it’s not push, just old. Different people grow up using different words as new ones overtake them.

My grandmother used to refer to the "working kitchen" which always confused me as a child, this was a two up two down terrace, there wasn't another kitchen that she had to differentiate from. I thought perhaps it was a Hyacinth Bucket sorted of thing, but I later learned it was just regional.

I'm happy for speech to be elevated. We are so dumbed down as a society with our language, grammar etc. I would love all old, long and pretentious words to make a comeback.

In fact, I shall be drawing a bath, erelong.

So what you mean is it's "old fashioned and borderline pretentious" amongst your own community and social group. That doesn't mean it's either of those things though. It's not old fashioned if it's in current usage and it's not pretentious if it's in general usage in some places.