I hear it in movies so the time. We’re going upstate. I went upstate. Etc

I never hear downstate, or similar. Does it just mean going north?

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    It means the Northern part of the state, typically when the state has a North-South cultural divide. It’s not exclusive to the US though, I’ve seen it used in places like Sao Paulo and Lagos before. Anywhere where one locality serves as a drain on the rest will get people to refer to different halves of the place, I guess nobody learned from Athens and Sparta.