Up the street without a paddle, or is it 'down' the street?

May 28, 2010 9:05 PM

Grammar filter: When do you say "up the street" versus "down the street"?

For one way streets, I figure "up" is against traffic and "down" is with the flow of traffic, similar to the use of up and down stream.

But how would you define it with two-way streets? Does it depend on which side of the road you are on? Does it depend on where the nearest main through road is located? Does it change if the road is clearly going up a hill?

Yes, yes, I know language is fluid and that in common parlance either form will communicate your message, but what's the "proper" way to use these phrases?

posted by thisisnotbruce to Writing & Language (36 answers total)

up = north
down = south
posted by caddis at 9:08 PM on May 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

If there is a noticeable hill, then yes, up is up the hill.

When there isn't any elevation change, then it should refer to the house numbers, the top of the block having the higher numbers. The same was was true for downtown and uptown.

In actual use, however, I don't think there is any real difference anymore.
posted by Some1 at 9:10 PM on May 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

For me, I use "up" to refer to streets whose elevation goes up, then to streets that go north, then finally, if the road runs east-west or no other good signifiers are present, to streets heading towards the center of population.
posted by adipocere at 9:11 PM on May 28, 2010

For a very short distance it's always down... down the block or down the way or street. With helpful pointing. If it's a bit longer or if i'm trying to convey direction then it's down if it's south or up if it's north.

East vs west... well, that would have to be along or over.

This is very specifically Chicago-ese which is a hill-less dialect, unless you count bridges, so mileage will vary, unlike our topography.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:13 PM on May 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

If you're looking for a specific stylistic rule, there isn't one. Generally, people use them to match the other definitions of "up," (i.e. north, or up a hill), "down," etc.
posted by tzikeh at 9:30 PM on May 28, 2010

Giving direction on the street, up/down is elevation-dependent, for the most part. Giving directions on a map, up/down is north/south.

Mostly, though, it doesn't matter in the slightest, and people will use either one interchangeably; I suspect there is no real convention for their usage.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:30 PM on May 28, 2010

Down the street is towards town. Up the street is towards the outskirts.

Down the street is towards the river. Up the street is towards the hills.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:36 PM on May 28, 2010 [3 favorites]

I've had this same issue trying to explain it ESL-wise. Without getting too complicated, up is up a hill or incline, down is down the same. I usually only give that explanation when I slip up and a student asks. Other than that, I stick to using "go straight for X blocks/until the Xth light" for simplicity's sake.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:42 PM on May 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

They're interchangeable. Question answered.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:57 PM on May 28, 2010 [11 favorites]

Absent a steep hill:

Up is whatever direction I just came from.

Down is whichever way I'm going.
posted by nat at 10:01 PM on May 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

Toward/away from town. It maps directly onto the idea of "Inbound/Outbound" in commuter rail. "Up the street" is away from the more densely packed commercial/residential zone. "Down the street" is toward it.

If I'm actually on the street talking about a place we're about to walk to, and we're already kind of downtown, I generally just say "It's just a couple/ a few / 10 blocks away" without an up or down reference.

I know my Midwestern cousins never said "downtown" was where the action was. They went "Up town." Not uptown as in a zone of town, but "Up [to the busy part of] town."
posted by Miko at 10:02 PM on May 28, 2010

My husband always says "up the street" when he's referring to things that are north or east of where you are, and "down the street" when referring to things that are south or west. Now I do this too.
posted by lexicakes at 10:04 PM on May 28, 2010

I think I use them pretty much interchangeably. Never really thought about it.
posted by amyms at 10:07 PM on May 28, 2010

For a very short distance it's always down... down the block or down the way or street. With helpful pointing. If it's a bit longer or if i'm trying to convey direction then it's down if it's south or up if it's north.

Weird. For me, it's the exact opposite. I suspect it comes from association with the phrase "it's just up here".

It's just up this alley/up this block/up the road half a mile.
vs
It's down the third side street/down the road 'bout fifteen miles.
posted by Netzapper at 10:07 PM on May 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

(But I have to qualify my answer by saying I live on an east-west street... In other circumstances I use "up" for north and "down" for south).
posted by amyms at 10:08 PM on May 28, 2010

With Miko - Often I use and hear it so that up is toward the center of town and down is going out of town.

If the subject is highways or roads between towns, then up is northward and down is southward.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 10:15 PM on May 28, 2010

Absent a steep hill:

Up is whatever direction I just came from.

Down is whichever way I'm going.

I was going to say just the opposite. If is matters, I was born and continue to live in flat lands.

Also, I have the same sense as DarlingBri - that down the street is towards the familiar and up the street is towards the more unfamiliar.
posted by kitcat at 10:18 PM on May 28, 2010

If you're at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, 666 Mockingbird Lane is down the street. 1420 Mockingbird Lane is just up the street.
posted by codswallop at 10:29 PM on May 28, 2010

I always thought of it in terms of water flowing downhill: "down the street" is the more natural direction, i.e. the direction I'm going. I've always lived in completely flat areas so actual slope had nothing to do with my choice of words.
posted by wsp at 11:05 PM on May 28, 2010

up = north or higher elevation or away from river or ocean or smaller or away from the center of the city.

down = south or lower elevation or toward the navigable body of water or toward the cenyter of the city ("downtown').
posted by orthogonality at 11:06 PM on May 28, 2010

I go/head/drive/walk down the street.

A person lives just up the street from me. A building is further up the street from here.

So, basically, my distinction is moving vs. not moving. "Further up the street" of course implies a direction, but the location isn't moving. If I'm giving directions and tell somebody something is "up the street" a ways, they'll have to go "down the street" to get there.

Compass direction, towards downtown or away from downtown don't matter. For reversed directions, I'd say "back down (or up) the street the other way." I do switch "down" and "up" if hills are involved.

I live in Virginia, and grew up here.
posted by nangar at 11:32 PM on May 28, 2010

Are most people really that aware of directions? I am, but I realized recently after taking a straw poll that most people I met had no idea what I meant when I said I lived "4 blocks south of the park."
posted by needs more cowbell at 11:34 PM on May 28, 2010

Up is a direction, down is a location.

Directions:
"You go up the street till you see that red house."
vs.
Location:
"It's just down here a ways".

Alternately:
Up is the way you send people, Down is the way you go yourself[1]:

"Yeah, just go up to Max's, I'll meet you there."
vs.
"I just have to run down to Max's for a bit."

[1] Not sure what that says metaphysically.
posted by madajb at 11:35 PM on May 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

There are some general rules, but since this is a naturally ambiguous setup, context is going to determine which factors (when there are multiple and conflicting factors) are most important. Some of those possible factors are: elevation (up/down a (hilly) street), distance (down a (short) street), cardinal direction (up/down a north/south street), geo-spatial direction (up (to a monument/tree on) or down (to a river/ravine on) a street), goal (up (towards something on) or down (away from something on) a street, and many more. It is a mix of these things, influenced by the intention of what you are trying to say, that will determine the up or down reference frame outcome. For example, if I'm wearing heels and don't want to walk anywhere, I may say that something is up the street rather than down it, to convey long distance; if my friend is wearing the heels and I want her to walk it anyway, I might say that our goal is down the street, to convey short distance (I may even use the qualifier 'just'). If the sun is setting, I might be more inclined to use the cardinal reference frame (if the other factors also corroborate my reasons for doing so), since this is easier to tell when the sun is a reference point. If we are talking about visiting the ocean at the end of the street, rather than the cliff at the top of the hill, we might be more inclined to say 'down' to the ocean, even if the ocean is to the north. The neat thing is, we don't often consciously realize we are doing this. Our brains just immediately weigh what's important and orient to that framework. So, I'm sorry, there is no hard and fast right or wrong on this one. And this is partly because our basic conceptual metaphors of 'up' and 'down' can refer to many, many things, including other metaphors, such as conceptualizations of good/bad, full/empty, activity, time, distance and space.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:38 PM on May 28, 2010 [2 favorites]

If you're at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, 666 Mockingbird Lane is down the street. 1420 Mockingbird Lane is just up the street.

This is a good observation. "Up" the street should coincide with the direction that the higher-numbered addresses are going, and "down" the street should coincide with lower numbers.
posted by amyms at 11:50 PM on May 28, 2010

I'd just add that the interpretation for this in Manhattan is comparatively fixed. UP the street is UPTOWN, DOWN the street is DOWNTOWN. People here can get confused if you start saying down and mean uptown.
Uptown of course is toward the top of Manhattan, with increasing street numbers, and downtown is toward the Southern tip of Manhattan, toward the alphabet soup where streets have no numbers and things get weird.
Also (though it has nothing to do with your question, or even Uptown or Downtown, but just because) Sunday is Manhattanhenge!
posted by raygan at 12:36 AM on May 29, 2010

The easiest way to avoid ambiguity is to just say "along the street" and specify a direction (towards some destination, or in the direction you're pointing).
posted by James Scott-Brown at 1:51 AM on May 29, 2010

I was always taught that you go up north, down south, back east, and out west as terms that are relative to where you are. This is for streets but also general directions (go up to Minnesota, down to the beach, out to California).
posted by Houstonian at 1:58 AM on May 29, 2010

Completely random, usually determined by if I'm gesturing with my left hand (Up the street) or right (down).
posted by Rendus at 2:16 AM on May 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Unless there's a slope it's arbitrary for me. I just say whichever comes to mind. I've noticed that I there isn't really a pattern for me. Oh, and the idiom is the same in Icelandic and I'm just as arbitrary in Icelandic as in English.
posted by Kattullus at 5:47 AM on May 29, 2010

It's circulatory. Down is along the big vessels closer to the heart from where I am. Up is when you need to go into some capillary that has no destinations except somebody's house.

Unless you're in Manhattan. Then you have your own rules. You're interstitial juice in a grid of cells.
posted by Sallyfur at 6:07 AM on May 29, 2010

If it involves my own actions, I use UP if I am traveling to the left of my starting point and DOWN if I am traveling to the right. Regarless of hills, running water or any other topographical signifiers.

Otherwise I say UP if, with a huge map in my head, the place in question would be above my current location; DOWN if the place is below it. Seriously. This is what I do.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 6:09 AM on May 29, 2010

This is a really interesting question. I think iamkimiam answered it well.

One thing I notice (American English, btw) is that down is used when orientation and goal are irrelevant. For example, I lived down the street from her/she lived down the street from me/we lived down the street from each other are all interchangeable. Also I was walking down the street is sort of my default when I'm telling a story. Up, I think, does often highlight relevant physical effort. I imagine farmers saying it a lot to people lost on country roads ("It's up a ways past the barn").

Maybe I'm just making all of this up, but I think if I'm walking in one direction and someone walks by me in the other direction, I would say they're headed down the street, but up the street if we're in tandem. Relative to me, down is ground already covered. Cardinal directions also play a role, but for me it's generally just in cities built on grids where cardinal directions are obvious, and only along the North/South axis at that.

There are languages that always capture these sorts of relations, with units of distance describing not only horizontal distance but also terrain, slope, etc ("frictional distance"). I wonder if this could be something along those lines, if the distinction is really there.
posted by null14 at 9:06 AM on May 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

null14 covered what I was about to write--and then some; great comment--but yeah: for me, it's almost completely arbitrary, but there's a slight hint of intent involved in "up". That is, someone walking up the street is going somewhere, someone walking down the street is just walking (they may be going somewhere too, but unlike with "up," the destination isn't the point of the sentence.)

This comment makes zero sense, I know.
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:47 AM on May 29, 2010

They are interchangeable, yet I still find myself saying 'up the street' when the direction is towards a main artery and 'down the street' when it's away from the intersecting road. Unspoken understanding between our family that this is what it means (to us).
posted by Hardcore Poser at 11:09 AM on May 29, 2010

Pointing left? It's up the street. Down the street is right.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:03 PM on May 29, 2010 [1 favorite]