Well, he did take care of the female, airport security guard pretty good. 
Isn’t that the very definition of arbitrary? The old maps could just as easily been made the other way, and then we’d say something else to stay consistent.
I remember, as a child, reading books about ancient Egypt, and always being sort of puzzled at the designation of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, which were clearly labeled incorrectly. It was years later (probably reading one of the “all rivers flow south” threads on the SDMB) that I experienced a grand head-smack moment. Of course. It’s Lower Egypt because it’s downriver.
Your Egypt comments helped me remember something similar in my own experiences. I spent my early years in Alabama where the terrain runs from mountainous North to Gulf Coast South so that going North actually does imply going Up. Moving to Tennessee where the terrain runs from mountainous East to Mississippi River West has things going sideways to my sense of how things ought to be. And when you look at the USA as a whole, it sort of hilly in the East to mountainous in the West, so even my Tennessee model is askew. Such things are local at best. It’s mostly what you get used to.
I find it interesting that in the Eastern states the “high points” of the individual states go in this order:
NC – 6684
TN – 6643
NH – 6288
VA – 5729
NY – 5344
ME – 5267
WV – 4861
GA – 4784
VT – 4393
KY – 4145
SC – 3560
MA – 3487
MD – 3360
PA – 3213
After these 14, the “high points” drop below 3000’ so when one speaks of going Up or Down to some other state, it makes about as much sense to say Up South as it does Up North when you see that it’s about evenly split between Yankee states and Rebel states as to where Up really is.
In Australian railway parlance (well, in New South Wales, at least), UP always means to Sydney, and DOWN means from Sydney. This is fine when you’re south of Sydney, and talking about the “Up train”, but it really messes with your head when you’re somewhere north of Sydney, going “up” to Sydney. Even west is a problem, because that’s where the mountains are, and you’ll talk about going down to the mountains from the coast.
Another fun usage involving “up” is the notion of “throw up.” I guess the portion of the throwing that involves getting stuff from the stomach to the mouth is more or less up, but to me “throw out” is really what you’re going for.
Do you ever consider what’s implied when you “go out”? Don’t you usually end UP going IN somewhere?
And what’s involved in “listen UP”?
And one of the most grating sounds to come out of a pitchperson’s mouth dealing with the presentation of food is the idea of “serving up” stuff (usually with “nice and hot” or “piping hot” or “golden brown” or whatever). It’s too close to “throwing up” to leave me with a good feeling. And on top of that I have this mental picture of the way hogs and chickens are fed by their food being “served up” from some slop pan. It doesn’t work for me and I wish they would dump the term.
I’ve noticed in Maine that whenever people talk about going to NH they saying “Goin’ up to NH…” and in NH it was always “Goin’ down to Maine…”
I was told it was something to do with travel by boat (i.e. wind or currents or something). I always end up saying the same things, myself, and am forced to correct myself.
My point was at first it was arbitrary, but once somebody decided to label the maps, and other’s used the same format, it isn’t arbitrary any longer. It’s now a standard.
It’s unclear when you say go to town, if you mean to physically go to the town, or go hog wild. Go downtown or uptown doesn’t risk somebody goin hog wild. OK, so I was enjoying using hog wild.
We say let’s go out, and we do leave the house and go to the car. We say let’s go in when standing outside the restaurant, and we go into the restaurant.
Amazing link!
Sounds arbitrary to me. Just consistantly so. (So consistant we’ve even got our models the of Solar System oriented the same way, as north being ‘up’)
Some people get confused when I say something like I’m going up to London.
I live to the south but most people (Who weren’t born local) think of London in the south.
But once a friend in Scotland said “There’s no way I’m going up to Cornwall just for a weekend’s camping”. Which is odd.
It turns out he always used the phrase “going up” when talking about camping coz he traditionally went camping in an area north of his village, so he naturally used the same turn of phrase when talking about my camping trip. Despite being hundreds of miles to the south of him.
Here’s one: in English I would usually talk about “heading up to Quebec City,” because Quebec City is north of here. However, in French, they would say descendre à Québec and monter à Montréal (“heading down to Quebec City” and “heading up to Montreal”) because Quebec City is downstream from Montreal along the St. Lawrence.