downtown
/ˌdaʊnˈtaʊn/adverb, adjective, noun
the central or commercial part of a city
From O.English down (in a descending direction) + O.English, borrowed from Germanic forms ultimately associated with Celtic town (originally an enclosure or fortified place).
Lineage
down
town
The story
In 1787, a Philadelphia witness used “down town” while describing where a pair of people lived—a phrase that still sounded like a direction, not yet the name of a city district. The “down” in it reaches back to Old English ofdūne, literally “off the hill,” while town began as an enclosure or stronghold before it grew into a word for an inhabited place. There is a historical twist: downtown’s first sense was “into the town,” and the later association with a city’s commercial heart seems to reflect port cities whose older centers lay below surrounding heights. By 1820, New York congressman Henry Meigs was already talking about rival “up town and down town boys.” So downtown is, at heart, a little map: first a hill, then a town, and finally the busy place people head toward.
Modern usage
In some slang usage, a place where police take someone for questioning; also used for a dangerous place.
- Heard in
- slang
Words from the same roots
down · Old English, ‘in a descending direction; originally associated with going off a hill’