the meaning of "down"

[Lost_Soul]

Hi,

I'm curious about the meaning the words down/up add to sentences of this sort:

I went down/up to the woods
I went down/up the main street

Could you shed some light on it, please

Does it have anything to do with the incline of the terrain ?

Thanks in anvance! :)

[Jamie (K)]

Sometimes these words are used to indicate the incline of the terrain. Sometimes the "down" and "up" are symbolic, and which direction people think of as "down" and which as "up" can depend on which social class mainly lives there, or how some other place is named.

I am used to calling the center of a city "downtown". There are town centers in my area that are actually higher in altitude than the rest of the town but are still called "downtown". In the town where my mother grew up, the place that I would call "downtown" was really called "uptown", because to its inhabitants, "downtown" meant the center of Chicago, and "uptown" meant the center of their own town. In some places, the town center is not called "downtown" or "uptown", but just "town".

It's all pretty complicated.

[Lost_Soul]

Hi, Jamie

Thank you for your help again!