Thoughts on Emergent Occasions - or, Feeling a Bit Up and Down

[steepholm]

I'm trying to crosspost from DW, and it's not working, so I'm doing this manually. If it ends up appearing twice, that's why.

Despite getting a flu jab before Christmas (just £10 at Tesco!), I appear over the last couple of days to have caught flu. It's not been totally incapacitating, and I'm already feeling a bit better (though still with a slight fever), so I'm hoping that the jab may at least have done some good in mitigating its effects. Still, it's annoying. Anyway, I apologise for any residual delirium in what follows.

Lying in bed this morning, staring at the ceiling, I got to thinking about the rise of "down". In particular, there are three usages, which seem to me related:

1. put down to = attribute to, as in "I put the mildness of my illness down to my having got a flu jab."

It struck me that this might have arisen as an accounting metaphor, where things are put down in different columns of credit and loss. And, having checked the OED just now, I see that the earliest cited uses do indeed make some mention of accounts, albeit more in a divvying up the bill sort of way: "His Death was not Legally Due for and from himself, but might be put down to the Account of others" (1723). At the very least, I think it would be reasonable to say that "put down to" derives from an act of recording, sharing out, dividing up, etc.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether there's any connection between that prepositional verb and the following two usages. Here's the first, which I'm fairly sure is of more recent date:

2. down to = attributable to, as in "The mildness of my illness is down to my having got a flu jab."

It looks very similar and it's doing a similar semantic job - but the "put" has disappeared! And then there's this:

3. down to = up to, as in "Whether you get a flu jab is down to you."

My sense is that this is more recent still. It looks slightly different from the first two, but it preserves the basic idea of attributing responsibility for an action or event, albeit in this case a future event.

What I find interesting, if I'm right in thinking that the latter two phrases are related to the first (and each other) is that this is an instance of a prepositional verb where the prepositional part has become independent of the verb part. "Down to" has broken free of the semantic giant that is "put", like a growler breaking from an iceberg.

Is this a reasonable reading? And, if so, can we think of any other prepositional verbs where something similar has happened - i.e. the prepositions have come to do the job without the verb?

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Neither the second or third usages are American, I don't think. That makes them sound very recent to me. I think of "down to" as in example number 2 as something I've heard on BBC news.

And there's the Rolling Stones' "Under my Thumb." I guess I always heard "It's down to me" as "it's come down to me to decide what happens now," that is come to the point where it's my decision. Maybe with a sense of a game being played: I finally rolled the right number for it to be my turn?

But what about "up to"? Where does that come from?

And I hope you feel better.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've been back to the OED, and you're right. Usages 2 and 3 date from 1955 and 1970, respectively, and all the examples are British. The second of these doesn't surprise me, but I'd have guessed a bit earlier for the first. (The 1970 example appears to be introducing the term as part of a police/criminal jargon: "P. Laurie Scotl. Yard 289 Down to:..X is down to Y = X is Y's responsibility.")

The OED is rather unhelpful with "up to". It offers no etymology, and the one example they provide is both a little odd in form ("put it up to them"), and at 1908 rather late. Certainly, it took me only a couple of minutes to push it back to 1840 with Google Books: "To them you are the company-—each one of you. It is up to you to practice common courtesy in all your dealings with the publlc." (Transit Journal News). All the early examples appear to be North American, but that may of course reflect Google's book selection.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the Stones song is an example of sense 2: i.e. it is because of me and my influence that these changes have been wrought.

I went out to get some medicine, but had to retire woozy.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I see that you're right about the Stones. It's one of those things: my childhood interpretation seemed the unquestionably right one. If it had been a song I'd heard only now, I think I would have heard it your way. But I heard it my American way without any ambiguity, and never thought till now to wonder.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

From "The Idiom of Democracy" (No date given for the essay, but it was published in a 1924 anthology,Pearls and Pepper. The author, Robert Palfrey Utter, was an American university professor of English, and my maternal great-grandfather.):

'Slang metaphors may survive when they are expressive and not far-fetched or obscure, providing--and this applies as well to all categories of slang--that the innate vulgarity of the word is not so strong that we cannot forget it. In some cases, the vulgarity is so slight that we cannot remember it, and wonder why the word should ever have been acceptable as slang. Hit, for example, as meaning success of one sort or another, is still recorded by conservative lexicographers as a bit of theatrical slang, but to most of us, if we think of the metaphor at all, it seems anything but vulgar. To Americans, it sounds like a figure from baseball, but it is older than the vogue of the game, and may have come from almost any sport--very likely from cricket, but possibly from archery or some form of shooting. We have an analogous figure seemingly from baseball but possibly from the stage, put it (or one) over (or across). There is no more in this of either humor or vulgarity than in hit, and no more apparent reason why it should not appear acceptable and useful. Many other current figures show analogy with accepted ones. If the expression up to ("It is up to you") still sounds slangy to some of us, and we defend our prejudice against it on the ground that it comes from the poker game in the back room of the corner saloon, let us remember expressions with which we find no fault that come from similar sources. Aboveboard, force one's hand, even play a lone hand, are in good use; no one thinks of objecting to them because they come from the card table. Aboveboard suggests that on the level, which still sounds slangy, may prove acceptable--there is no objection to the figure, but there seems to be some mysterious vulgarity in the construction as in "on the cheap and on the quiet". But vulgarity does die out, even where its offense would seem most rank; women who could scarcely be brought to mention perspiration under its politest name will talk unblushingly of their sweaters. The taint of the prize-ring has gone from floor ("He was completely floored"); why should it not also go from sidestep? Similarly such phrases as deliver the goods, get away with it, all in, call down, turn down, throw down, fall for it, put the skids under, now strike the fastidious ear with varying degrees of offense, but it is by no means impossible that they may some day find themselves in the best of company.'

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's very interesting. I had no idea that "up to" derived from poker: do you know how that works? If I had to guess about "hit" I might be tempted by fencing, but that probably comes from reading Hamlet in my misspent youth. Quite possibly it became theatrical slang by way of Denmark, in fact: "Was I good?" "A palpable hit, dear boy!" (I admit this is speculative!)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought "down to me" would be "there's no one else left to accomplish this." I don't know the song (being something of a music ignoramus outside a few enthusiasms), so am not sure whether it makes sense there.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean, though I don't think it can mean that in the song.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Not sure, but those last two don't sound familiar to me.

I always thought 'down' in this sense came from the sixties, drug years, 'uppers' and 'downers' but there is the African-American use of down which is orthogonal to that. So many connotations, the only one I can think of right now being "I'm down with that."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Prepositions are the Grimpen Mire of the English language.

[sovay]

I'm trying to crosspost from DW, and it's not working, so I'm doing this manually. If it ends up appearing twice, that's why.

I haven't been able to crosspost since right before New Year's. It's very frustrating. I can't get entries and comments to import, either; I'm going to have to hand-sort a lot when LJ finally gets its act together.

3. down to = up to, as in "Whether you get a flu jab is down to you."

I've never heard that! First two usages, yes, although the second is less common in my conversational experience and reads to me as something of a shorthand. The third is just spatially confusing.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

What prompted this post was the dissonance caused by a couple of my students who, doing a "write in the style of" exercise on texts from 1900ish, used "down to" in the third sense. But I shouldn't have been surprised: reading all those historical books for Reading History demonstrated too clearly how many professional writers have a tin ear for this kind of thing.

[goliard.livejournal.com]

Presumably the same thing happened with "into" in the (exclusively American?) sense of "interested in" (She's really into scifi). This could only have started with a verb of motion, She got into scifi, but the verb dropped out leaving the otherwise directional into playing an oddly stationary role.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's a great example - thank you!

[goliard.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the same kind of equivalence-of-opposites that you get in "down to"="up to" also exists (at least here in California) in "down for"="up for". I'm down for / up for playing Ultimate Frisbee tomorrow (to give a very local-colory example).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

We have that one too - I don't think I think of it as particularly American, but it may well be. "I could care less," on the other hand, still has me scratching my head...

[perdix.livejournal.com]

And then there's "down (on)", as in "Why is she so down on sci-fi all of a sudden?" I wonder how that usage relates to the others...?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I should think a elision of "came down on." (NOT, of course, to be confused with "went down on." What a terrible language we do have.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Seems plausible!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, there seems to be a ghost verb there too - quite possibly the one ethelmay suggests.