grump

[gfish]

Who else gets slightly annoyed when people don't use the correct map-relative direction (up->north, down->south, over->east/west) when talking about large-scale geography? From Seattle I can head up to Vancouver, down to Portland, or over to Spokane. Period.

Comments

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Depends upon the reason for the terminology. Here in Massachusetts, there's an old tradition of referring to Maine as Down East, because the prevailing winds will blow one up the coast (hence, down wind) and as one goes down wind one travels quite a bit east as well as north.