downward
/ˈdaʊnwərd/adverb, adjective, preposition
toward a lower place, level, or condition
From O.English down (Toward a lower place).
Lineage
down
-ward
The story
Picture someone in Old English stepping off a hill: that is the image behind the “down” in downward. The old expression ofdūne literally meant “off the hill,” and its shortened form dūne became the ancestor of modern down. Then English attached -weard, a suffix meaning “turned in the direction of,” so downward is, at heart, “turned toward down.” That directional suffix has distant cousins in German -wärts and Dutch -waarts; its deeper connection to the idea of turning also appears in words such as verse, though the linguistic path is not simply a direct leap from one word to another. Down itself has a more uncertain deep history: sources offer competing links to an Indo-European root associated with dust or haze, or to one meaning “finish, come full circle,” so the safe story ends with the hill. The word’s memorable secret is that downward began not with gravity, but with a person going off a hill.