От окна тянет холодом, поэтому я закрою окно.

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Breakdown of От окна тянет холодом, поэтому я закрою окно.

• окно: the window
• закрыть: to close
• от: from

Questions & Answers about От окна тянет холодом, поэтому я закрою окно.

Why is it от окна, not из окна?

Because от is the natural preposition here for the source of a draft, cold, smell, or some physical sensation coming from the direction of something.

• от окна тянет = there’s a draft coming from the window / from the area of the window
• из окна more literally means out of the window or from inside the window opening

So in this sentence, от окна does not mean something is coming from inside the window; it means the cold is coming from that side / from near the window.

Also, от requires the genitive case, which is why окно becomes окна.

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What does тянет mean here? I thought тянуть meant to pull.

Yes, the basic meaning of тянуть is to pull, but in this sentence it is used in a very common impersonal way.

Here, тянет means something like:

• there is a draft
• cold air is coming
• it’s blowing cold

So От окна тянет холодом means roughly:

• A cold draft is coming from the window
• It’s blowing cold from the window

This is one of those cases where Russian uses a verb more broadly than English does. You can think of it as an idiomatic weather/sensation expression.

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Why is there no subject in тянет? What is doing the action?