Superiority

This chapter describes up and down as adverbs with secondary function—just in their spatial and closely related senses—as prepositions. It highlights the contrasting origins of up and down in Old English, wherein there were two adverbs, ūp, upp ‘upward’ that indicate motion, and uppe ‘on high’ that describe location. These merged into modern adverb up /ʌp/ ‘to or at a high place’. The chapter cites the noun dūn ‘hill’ in OE and the OE adverb of-done ‘downwards’ that involved the combination of preposition of with the dative form, dūne, of dūn ‘hill’. This gave rise to adverb adown and thence to modern-day down /daun/ ‘to or at a low place’.