I hear it in movies so the time. We’re going upstate. I went upstate. Etc
I never hear downstate, or similar. Does it just mean going north?
It’s a New York thing. That state loosely divides into two regions: New York City to the south, and everything else to the north (“upstate”). I have heard people refer to the New York City area as “downstate” but that term is less common.
Similarly, Manhattan is loosely split into its northern portion (uptown), middle portion (midtown), and southern portion (downtown).
In Illinois you might hear “downstate” to refer to anything south of Champaign-Urbana
Echoing a lot of the people here, I’ve personally only heard it used in New York state
Like others are saying, it is a new york thing. But in general, upstate means further from the city than where the speaker lives. Until you crouse some imaginary line, then downstate means closer to the city. Comonly, but not always, it is used in a derogatory sense. They city people think the upstaters are rural hicks. And the upstaters think the city people couldn’t survive outside a city. Source, I grew up in an area that didn’t consider itself upstate, but all the city people sure did.
Is it due to the fact NYC is in the southern part of NY?
I think it’s elevation as much as north/south.
Yes but also when people are telling someone they’re from New York they tend to assume the city, so the follow-up answer is for clarification. The state is big and wildly different from NYC
Yeah, I went sightseeing to Niagara Falls, then to Buffalo. They’re nothing like NYC.
Outside main city? For NY it’s any area outside New York City. Like Albany or Rochester.
A lot of people are saying it’s primarily a NY thing, so I’d just chime in to say we use it in PA as well, at least in the Philly area, to refer to the northern parts of the state.
Not much more to it than youre going far enough north to be out of your city’s metro area, but staying in the same state. In PA I’d say upstate probably starts around the Poconos. I think new Yorkers kind of tend to use it to refer to the rest of the state, we wouldn’t tend to do that here, Central and Western PA are different things than Upstate PA, although there is definitely some overlap and there’s not exactly clearly defined borders.
I don’t know how many other states use the same terminology, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pretty common in other largish states with larger population densities in the southern part of the state and lower densities in the north (I don’t know off the top of my head which other states that would apply to, maybe it’s only PA and NY)
Maine uses “Down East”, which is actually north east of the Portland area. Actually I’m not sure anyone really totally understands exactly what or where down east is there.
Most states I’ve lived in use “up north” when taking about the northern half of rural part of a state.
I have never called any part of PA upstate. (Not that it’s wrong that you do) Everyone I know calls the northern half of the eastern third of the state “the Northeast” or NEPA. Western PA is the entire western third of the state, and Central PA is for some reason only the southern half of the middle third of the state. I guess maybe the northern half of the middle third could be upstate, but I think I just don’t have a word for it.
As long as I don’t have to be associated with Pittsburgers I’ll be happy.
Pittsburgh and Philly with Kentucky in the middle!
This is absolutely reflective of my experience in PA as well. Everything you said and exactly as you said it.
Nothing is “upstate”.
NEPA is anything north of 80 and (roughly) east of where the Susquehanna splits near Selinsgrove.
Western PA is the whole state, north to south, from the Ohio border to approximately 219.
Central PA is south of 80, between 219 in the west, and east up to and including Lancaster county.
The part that’s left over is usually just called “north central PA”, but there’s not much of anything up there, so it’s usually referred to by specific county or town in that region, and most frequently when you do hear that, it’s someone describing where their hunting camp is.
Hmm I never heard anyone say upstate PA but I never had much business up there lol
I lived in the Harrisburg area for 30 years and I’ve never heard it used to refer to any part of PA.
I’m probably wrong, but I think it means somewhere north of the capital city, and maybe it’s only used in New York
You are very wrong. Albany is part of “upstate NY” and Albany is literally the capital city… In NY it means basically anywhere that isn’t NYC.
Oh well, I tried. Thanks for clarifying!
Ok, so upstate means north of the capital or north NYC if in New York?
The term upstate has no relation to the capital city, that was a mistaken assertion. It isn’t used very widely at all, it’s just a local term in a couple of states for their northern portions. Most states don’t have an area that is referred to as upstate.
In NY state it essentially means anywhere north of NYC, the capital city Albany is upstate NY. It doesn’t seem to mean north of the capital in any state unless that capital is at the southern part.
Upstate in NY is literally the entire state other than NYC and Long Island.
Only New York. It means all the parts of New York state that aren’t New York City
Long Island is excluded too
Is Long Island named Long Island because its long?
yes. 100 miles or so
It appears so, it was called other things by native people but the Dutch seem to be the first to call it Long Island in the 1600s. Many geographic features in the area have similar sort of names, like Short Hill, East River, West River, Indian Hill, Short Beach, Beaver Swamp, the colonists really weren’t very clever with their naming.
Sending someone upstate means sending them to prison
Ive heard it used to mean going to jail
this really only applies to New York, as New York City is in the bottom little bit of the state’s southern nubbin and the rest of the state is commonly called “Upstate New York” since when people outside the northeast refer to New York, they’re talking about New York City, rather than the state of New York. thus Upstate New York was shortened to Upstate. (it seems to hold that most people i know who grew up in the northeast call New York City “NYC” rather than what i used growing up which was “New York.”
I am an american, I grew up in a state in the south west, no one ever used the term “going upstate” for anything because there was no such place to go.
I guarantee you only see dialog such as this in media set in NYC.
upstate: situated or occurring in the northern part of a state, especially the northern part of New York State as contrasted with New York City. “upstate New York”
It refers to the northern part of whatever state the speaker happens to be in. It’s mostly used by New Yorkers to refer to the more rural part of New York State which is North of New York City.
Downstate is a thing, I guess, but neither upstate nor downstate are used much outside of New York in my experience.
Upstate is used in South Carolina as well, used to refer to the western and more mountainous part of the state. The eastern non-mountainous part of the state is called low-country.
With the Midlands to mean everything from Rock Hill through Columbia and to Aiken!
It refers to a rural area of the state. Usually with a higher income bracket.
I live in Southern California and we don’t really use that phrase around here. I think it’s almost entirely used to refer to basically any area of New York north of NYC.
Yeah, I’ve lived in quite a few different states, but only in NYC do I hear and use “upstate.”
