Origin of the term "Upstate"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 8:44 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>
> I have family members who speak of "going down to Boston," which is
> north for them.  This is jarring to me, as I have always thought that "up"
> denotes north and "down" denotes south.

We talked about this a bit last year after my On Language column
covering "down the shore" came out:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1008B&L=ADS-L&P=21934

And "down the shore" came up again recently in my AV Club interview
about Philly / S Jersey dialectal features:

http://www.avclub.com/philadelphia/articles/the-etymology-of-jawn,55508/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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