Drafty means letting cold air blow through. A drafty room, drafty windows, cold and drafty.
It is always a complaint, and it describes old houses, badly fitted windows and church halls. A draft is air moving where you did not want it, which is why the same airflow is welcome in summer and not in January. This is the American spelling; British English writes draughty. Note draught excluder, the British name for the thing that fixes it.
1adjectivedraftyLetting cold air blow through.
“The old farmhouse was so drafty that we wore jumpers indoors all winter.”
drafty is a quality of admitting cold air.
Also accepted in games: draughty
Drafty is draft plus -y, and draft is a respelling of draught, from Old English dragan, to draw. The air is drawn through, which is exactly what the word says.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰregʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*drahtuz — a pulling, drawing
Proto-West Germanic
*drahti
Old English
*dreaht
Middle English
draught
English
draft
English, today
drafty
Built from
From earlier draughty, equivalent to draft + -y. draft A phonetic spelling of draught (compare laughter), from Middle English draught, draght (“that which is pulled; that which is drawn up, a design”), from Old English dreaht, dræht, from Proto-West Germanic drahti, drahtu, from Proto-Germanic drahtuz (“a pulling, drawing”). Cognate with Dutch dracht, German Tracht, Icelandic dráttur. by surface analysis, en + draw + t.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA