[Ads-l] How prevalent is "to upstream"?

[Laurence Horn]

Perfect.  So it’s been around longer than I thought—and it’s NYC-based, which supports my hunch.

LH

> On May 29, 2017, at 4:14 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Below is an instance of "upstreamed" with the desired sense that
> probably appeared in a 1976 book.
> 
> Year: 1976
> Title: The blood-red dream
> Author: Michael Collins
> Publisher: New York: Dodd, Mead
> Series: A Red badge novel of suspense
> Database: Google Books Snippet; data may be inaccurate and should be
> verified on paper
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> He walked toward Lexington, turned south waving for a taxi. He was no
> New Yorker. Going downstream was no way to get a cab at any time, and
> never in the rain. I upstreamed him, got my taxi, and had it follow
> him slowly down the avenue.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Garson
> 
> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 3:52 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> …or in the passive, “to be upstreamed”, as employed in this NYT Metropolitan Diary item a couple of weeks ago:
>> 
>> Dear Diary:
>> 
>> On a cold Friday night on West End Avenue at 83rd Street, an older man and woman hailed a cab that flashed its lights in response. As the cab waited for the light to change, a young man grabbed it. The older man could be heard saying to his wife that being “upstreamed” was part of New York City life and to be accepted. The young man unexpectedly jumped from the cab, approached the couple, apologized and turned toward Broadway to find another cab. The older man saw a second cab and hailed it, calling out to the younger man, who happily climbed in. Only in New York can being upstreamed create an encouraging circle of good citizenship.
>> 
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/nyregion/metropolitan-diary-upstreamed-hailing-a-cab-on-west-end-avenue.html
>> 
>> It seemed as though everyone involved, and several commenters, were familiar with the term (as well as the practice, advertent or in-), but I’m pretty sure I’d never previously encountered the lexical item, despite growing up in and around NYC. True, I've very rarely taken taxis and you can’t be upstreamed by someone at a bus or subway stop.   Is this a particularly NYC expression?  Googling, I do find a number of examples (it’s not new) but not all *that* many, once you filter out the irrelevant homonym from the tech world.  Well, I suppose not entirely irrelevant since the software expression ultimately employs the same metaphor (upstream is ‘closer to the source’), so maybe it involves polysemy rather than homonymy.
>> 
>> The dictionaries I consulted (OED, AHD, Urban) don’t include an entry for the (active or passive) verb.
>> 
>> LH
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org