Post-87: Up For That, Down For That

“Would you be up for that?”  is what I asked.
“Yeah, I’m down for that”, he replied.

I was puzzled that these two opposite-seeming phrases could mean exactly the same. I’d never thought about it.

Translation into simple-English:
“Do you want to do that?”
“Yes, I do want to do that.”

After the matter was settled (he “did want to do that”), I noted with interest our use of opposite words (“up” and “down”) to mean the same. How could this have come about? A linguistic puzzle, perhaps.

A thirty-second analysis followed, twice the time spent on the fifteen-second conversation itself. He said that “up for that” sounded old-fashioned to him. He claimed it was something his father would say. (“He” is the 23-year-old Californian I’ve alluded to on these digital pages before.) / He is from the San Francisco Bay Area. He further proposed that “down for that” may be a more Pacific-Northwest-centric phrase, befitting the supposed laid-back attitude of the natives of that region (“down” being the more “laid-back”, I guess). “Up for that” sounds more optimistic and energetic, though, doesn’t it? “Down for that” sounds a little negative, a little sarcastic, a little cynical, a little suspicious…

“Down for that” is a phrase I have never used. It’s always sounded “street” to me, by which I mean not-far-removed from ebonics. If I used “down for that”, I might as well call people “homeys” and so on. I’m not a “whigger” (as Whites who ostentatiously imitated Black speech were called, disparagingly, in my school-days). On the other hand, phrases / words from Black-slang have frequently shifted into general (White) usage in the past century or two, haven’t they.

That now-ubiquitous word “cool” is one of the words that comes from Black slang, so they say. When did it become “non-racial” and become commonly used by (non-“whigger”) Whites? I don’t know. 1970s? Another linguistic puzzle.

What seems obvious to me, anyway, is that there have thus always been people alive who’d developed their linguistic-sensibilities before the crossover occurred. White men of my grandfathers’ generation (both of mine were born in the 1910s-USA) would never have used the word “cool” unless the temperature were involved. Maybe I’m just a bit too old, too, and this “down for that” has been, unbeknownst to me, becoming “mainstream” these past years, after I’d already cast my lot against it. / I can’t imagine ever bringing myself to use it; I’d feel like a true idiot.

Update: Post-88 “Up For This, Down For That (Part II)” is a follow-up to this post.