Just down from a little pizzeria.

[jutfrank]

I think you have something there. I think there is also some element (where the place is completely flat) of 'up' being the direction of the more important/bigger thing. So, in a cul-de sac, up the road/street is towards the junction, down towards the dead end. When a road/street has no dead end, then up is towards a bigger road or the town (centre)

In my youth, many years ago, the up-train was the train was going in the direction of the nearest city, the down-train coming from it.

Yes. That all makes sense to me. It seems to me that up is in some sense more challenging, and in some way against the 'natural flow'. I suppose this notion comes from our experience of gravity, where things go from up to down.

I think your example of a cul-de-sac is a good one because it shows down to mean towards an end-point. We're more likely to say down to the end of the road than up to the end of the road, I think.

 

[jutfrank]

emsr2d2: I know we must have talked about this before but could you remind me what you're more likely to say in each case, and how unlikely the alternative is?

I'm going up to London.
I'm going down to London.

a) if you were in Brighton
b) if you were in Cambridge
c) if you were in Bristol

I welcome other members' answers too, of course.

 

[emsr2d2]

From Brighton, it's up to London. From Cambridge, it's down to London. I'm really not sure about Bristolians - I have a feeling they'd say "down to London" but you'd have to ask one of them. Bristol is almost directly west of London, so it's hard to guess.

 

[GoesStation]

My reading, and watching British television and film, tell me that the upper crust (perhaps of bygone days) only went one way to London. I can't remember whether it was up or down, but it didn't seem to matter where they started. And London was often simply "town".

 

[emsr2d2]

In the days when it was quite rare to visit the capital, I think you're right that many people referred to it as "up" to London. That had, I think, more to do with the fact that going to London was seen as something quite exciting and impressive.
In certain suburbs of London, you'll even hear people use similar phrases. In the soap opera EastEnders, which is set (unsurprisingly) in the East End of London, characters are sometimes heard saying that they're going "up west". That means they're going into central London. From where they are, the centre of the city is to the west and they use "up" for the same reason I gave in my first paragraph.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Are we making any progress here? I'd like to get down to it, but I might not be up to it.

 

[jutfrank]

From Brighton, it's up to London. From Cambridge, it's down to London. I'm really not sure about Bristolians - I have a feeling they'd say "down to London" but you'd have to ask one of them. Bristol is almost directly west of London, so it's hard to guess.

I was asking what you think you personally would say.

I think GoesStation is right that there's a general bias towards saying up to London, which is either overridden, or at least complicated, when London is south of the starting point. What I mean is that I think it's very unlikely that somebody in Brighton would ever say down to London. However, somebody in Cambridge is likely to say down to London, because the north to south 'down' bias overrides the 'up to London' bias. That's what I had in mind when I asked the question.

To put what I mean more clearly:

From Brighton, it's almost always up to London.
From Cambridge, both up to London and down to London are easily conceived.
From Bristol, up to London is more likely.

(For those unaware, Brighton is directly due south, Cambridge is due north and Bristol is due west of London.)

 

[GoesStation]

My wife's family always occupy the high ground. Wherever they are, they say they've come up there. I've been hearing this for thirty-five years and still cringe each time.