up or down?
Today the bus driver told us that the company has purchased fourteen new buses for Laurel (and not before they were needed, let me add. Hopefully, these won't leak in the rain, or break down constantly).
"They're going to send these raggedy old buses back down to Baltimore," he said.
That sounded very odd to me. I'd have said "back up to Baltimore."
I've noticed there is no clear agreement (heck, no agreement at all) on when to say "up to" X and when "down to" it. As kids, my siblings, friends, and I tried to hash out some pattern: is it north and south? to the center and away from it? to where you feel at home and away from there? We had it worked out to our satisfaction, but it didn't take us long to see that others use the adverbs otherwise. And it's hard to predict which one any given person will use with any given place.
Labels: language
2 Comments:
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At 5:08 PM, September 05, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 5:53 AM, September 06, 2007
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Barring things that demand a variance ("down the hill", even if it's north), my impression is that there's a tendency toward using "up" for north, but it's far from universal... just a tendency. Except...
...in New York City, where "up", "down", and "across" are used very specifically, and to misuse them is to mark yourself as a "foreigner" as surely as to pronounce "Houston St" as though it were a city in Texas.
That tendency exists, but in my experience it can be overridden easily by other things. For instance, we're south of Baltimore, yet he said "down".
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