North = Down?

[YankeyMCC]

This has been a pet peeve of mine ever since the day a friend of mine who went to a local Vocational High School said "Let's go down to Maine." (We live in Massachusetts) We were both high school seniors so this was a long time ago.

I realized that day that he could not draw a rough outline of New England and didn't know what the relative positions were of the NE States.

So ever since then when people make what I think is a mistake - referring to a place that is North of them as "Down" or vice versa (South as up) a question pops in my mind about the person's general knowledge level.

This happened to me today where someone in NC asked me "How's the weather down there in Mass today?"

But it seems to me that this north/down comment happens a lot. Am I out of sync with the rest society should North be "down" or is is "down" acceptable slang for any medium to far off location regardless of direction?

[trotsky]

1. Does anyone say "up South"? I don't think so!

It's "up North" and "down South". Yeah, gotta wonder about people's sense of direction...

[Goldmund]

2. Now tell me,

is there an intrinsic reason that North should be up?

[MADem]

3. He's thinking of the term Down East

Google down east Maine and you will see.

[YankeyMCC]

7. Always thought that term came from people in Northern Maine

I mean their to the point of wanting to disown those Down Easterners these days. :)

But apparently it comes from Boston based sailors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_East

[Abelman]

4. I was thinking yesterday

How wild would it be to have a map with everything upside down (except names and such). To look at the world from a truly different perspective.

[LynzM]

5. I had a teacher in h.s. who had one

Totally weird. And there's really no reason it shouldn't be that way, except that we're used to it the way it is. He used to keep it up on his chalkboard, just for fun :)

[kick-ass-bob]

8. Here they are

http://www.odt.org/pictureembed.htm

South is up.

My boss used to have one.

[Abelman]

9. Thanks!

[Igel]

6. Sometimes it's actually based on elevation.

Had a friend from Idaho who would talk about down "down to Eugene". I've mostly the down = lower business from people west of the Mississippi.

Also note that Upper Egypt is south of Lower Egypt. And Upper Sorbian is south of Lower Sorbian, High German is south of Low German. All for the same reason.

[RedCloud]

10. We have to go down to the North star.

From space everything is down to a gravity source. I think as the millennia go flying by you should have to adjust to down anywhere.