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?
It’s a New York thing to refer to the rural Northern and Western parts of New York State that are not New York City. No one (or at least very very few) outside of New York State uses it to refer to any other place.
Anything north of 34th Street is upstate, fight me
this really only applies to New York, as New York City is in the bottom little bit of the state’s southern nubbin and the rest of the state is commonly called “Upstate New York” since when people outside the northeast refer to New York, they’re talking about New York City, rather than the state of New York. thus Upstate New York was shortened to Upstate. (it seems to hold that most people i know who grew up in the northeast call New York City “NYC” rather than what i used growing up which was “New York.”
I am an american, I grew up in a state in the south west, no one ever used the term “going upstate” for anything because there was no such place to go.
I guarantee you only see dialog such as this in media set in NYC.
Like others are saying, it is a new york thing. But in general, upstate means further from the city than where the speaker lives. Until you crouse some imaginary line, then downstate means closer to the city. Comonly, but not always, it is used in a derogatory sense. They city people think the upstaters are rural hicks. And the upstaters think the city people couldn’t survive outside a city. Source, I grew up in an area that didn’t consider itself upstate, but all the city people sure did.
It works just like updog
What does that mean?
I live in Southern California and we don’t really use that phrase around here. I think it’s almost entirely used to refer to basically any area of New York north of NYC.
A lot of people are saying it’s primarily a NY thing, so I’d just chime in to say we use it in PA as well, at least in the Philly area, to refer to the northern parts of the state.
Not much more to it than youre going far enough north to be out of your city’s metro area, but staying in the same state. In PA I’d say upstate probably starts around the Poconos. I think new Yorkers kind of tend to use it to refer to the rest of the state, we wouldn’t tend to do that here, Central and Western PA are different things than Upstate PA, although there is definitely some overlap and there’s not exactly clearly defined borders.
I don’t know how many other states use the same terminology, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pretty common in other largish states with larger population densities in the southern part of the state and lower densities in the north (I don’t know off the top of my head which other states that would apply to, maybe it’s only PA and NY)
I lived in the Harrisburg area for 30 years and I’ve never heard it used to refer to any part of PA.
I guess you might be hearing it movies set in New York City, which is in the southern tip of the state of New York. All the other notable cities, the Catskill mountains, Niagara Falls, and other attractions are all further north, or upstate. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the expression got picked up by a wider crowd to mean “north”.
upstate: situated or occurring in the northern part of a state, especially the northern part of New York State as contrasted with New York City. “upstate New York”
Ive heard it used to mean going to jail
In NY it means "north or west, but definitely not east or south of NYC
Sending someone upstate means sending them to prison
Yeah! I’ve never heard it in BC, Canada. “I’m going upstate BC.” “Prince George?! Fort Saint John!?!”
Doesn’t sound right.
As others have said, going to the northern part. Depending on the state it usually carries with it the idea of a change of scenery abd culture.
For example a New Yorker may say “upstate” referring to the more rural areas.
Similar to how “out west” in early US history meant “wild and untamed country full of potential, opportunities and danger”
While I’ve never heard down state I have heard similar.
“Down south” or “below I10” or “Cajun country” in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi referring to the gulf, more Catholic Cajun areas. And down south in other states referring to the southern states.
My understanding is that it means going, loosely, to the opposite side of the state of the major metropolitan area in that state. Upstate NY is the northwest part, upstate MA is the west part, upstate PA is the northeast part. I’m looking around, and it seems to also 1) only be used on a few states, 2) usually is on the north half (but not always), and 3) is somewhat interchangable with “rural”.
I’d bet a dollar OP just watched the Friends Porsche episode.
