Timeline for Why does 'up' have a positive connotation and 'down' have a negative connotation?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 24, 2022 at 15:01 | comment | added | jsw29 | Is there any reason to think that English is in this respect different from other languages? | |
| Mar 24, 2022 at 10:23 | comment | added | Stuart F | The OED's senses of up include "in a state of disorder", "played out", "finished", "advanced in years", and "in court" (being prosecuted) as well as increased in rank or value. | |
| Dec 10, 2014 at 8:52 | vote | accept | Yaitzme | ||
| Dec 4, 2014 at 14:32 | comment | added | keshlam | After consideration, I'm afraid I disagree with the assertion behind this question. I agree that this is a common association, but in US English at least I don't believe it's anywhere near as strong as Yaitzme suggests. | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 3:05 | comment | added | keshlam | @congusbongus: Light/dark too. (A friend of mine created a fictional culture of nocturnal creatures living in a desert, partly to explore exactly this point -- translating "may you walk in the light" literally into their language yields a rather nasty curse.) | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 18:19 | answer | added | John Lawler | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:53 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 4, 2014 at 18:43 | |||||
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:30 | answer | added | keshlam | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:22 | answer | added | miltonaut | timeline score: 7 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:17 | answer | added | herisson | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:17 | comment | added | congusbongus | This phenomenon not only occurs in many more word-pairs (high/low, tall/short, over/under), it is also common across many languages. Therefore it's a deeper question than English alone, perhaps linguistics or even human psychology are more appropriate. | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:12 | answer | added | atxdba | timeline score: -1 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 6:09 | history | asked | Yaitzme | CC BY-SA 3.0 |