Switch on vs Turn on (2025)

Hi,
could you explain me the difference between "switch on" and "turn on" ?
Thanks,
G.

Ciao G,
In the US there is generally no difference in use although "switch on ..." has become somewhat obsolete. "Turn on the lights", "turn on the radio", "turn on the TV", "turn on the oven", etc. is often used.

I don't see much difference between them. I think I switch from one to the other without thinking about it.

Thanks for this clarification.
Anyway, do you think I was right about the etymologies of the two verbs?

Ciao beauxyeux,
In my opinion you are correct. A knob on a radio is turned and a light switch on a wall is switched (on or off). Techinically a knob and a switch do the same thing. They both change a state usually the knob changes the state variably. Colloquially they are used here in the US interchangeably but, as I previously said, in my part of the country "switch on" is rarely heard.

Well yes in some regions people use "open the light" or "close the light", but, of course it is not good Italian.
What I wanted to say here was that, in my opinion, English-speaking people began using "switch on" when switches were invented, while before they used "turn on". Think of old Tv sets on which you have knobs that needed to be turned (girati - I'm speaking of the gesture) to make the TV start working. You couldn't "switch them on" because they didn't have a "switch" (interruttore).
Does it make sense, now?

beauxyeux,
I agree that because the knob pre-dated the switch "turn on" became an idiom that continues to today. After all my television is controlled by a remote control unit that requires pushing a button to activate it. Yet we always say turn on the tv set! The house in which I grew up had gas lights that were activated by turning a knob and lighting it with a match. Often my grandmother would say "I opened the light" she meant she opened the gas knob and lit the fixture. All these fixtures were converted to electricity when I was very young but the "opening and closing the lights" persisted.

Thanks a lot to all of you.

This is quite a long time after the question was asked, but there is one point no one else seems to have made: For electrical appliances 'turn on' and 'switch on' are equally appropriate, but in British English at least, we 'turn on' a tap, never 'switch it on'. This would bear out the idea that it depends on whether you turn something or flick a switch. In this case there is clearly no switch involved.