Going Downhill

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how’s it going?

Super, who’s this?

This is Patrick, I’m calling from Illinois.

Welcome to the show, how can we help?

So I have a question regarding a turn of phrase that I’ve used my whole life without really thinking much about it.

And the phrase is going downhill, or variations on the phrase going downhill.

I was having a conversation with a friend about my health.

I had been ill and was getting better.

And she was asking about how I was doing.

And I said, oh, you know, well, it’s all downhill from here, meaning it’s going to get gradually better and the worst is over.

She then looked at me with, you know, a lot of sympathy.

And I think she thought that I was not long for the world.

She interpreted the exact opposite.

And so I started thinking about different ways that the phrase is used.

And I wondered if you had any insight as to whether the positive sense or the negative sense is predominant or whether there are instances in which the phrase is used both ways.

Boy, there’s a great instance of when words collide, right?

When idioms collide.

Yeah, when idioms collide.

I mean, you have two completely different meanings.

And I’m not sure there’s really a way to research your question.

I would have to talk about just my own sense of it, which is if somebody’s talking about their medical condition, everything going downhill from there, I would be sympathetic as well.

But there’s a very specific thing happening here. The word downhill exists in company with very specific words depending on the context.

If you say, I’m going downhill from here, you mean that you’re about to die.

If you say it’s all downhill from here, you mean that all of the hard work is over and it’s easy from here on out.

If you look in the corporate, that’s exactly how it’s used almost always.

They’re very specific.

Very specific.

Yeah.

And so that’s one question.

You know, I distinguish between all downhill from here, which is generally the positive one, and going downhill, which restaurant might go downhill.

It’s generally the negative.

That’s right.

So the verb go with downhill is almost always negative, and it’s all downhill is almost always positive.

The all is required in there.

Oh, interesting.

All right.

Well, now I know.

Now I know when I’m talking about my health to make sure to distinguish between the two so I don’t worry anyone.

No, no.

You get more flowers and presents that way.

Just confuse them.

All right.

Well, thanks, guys, very much.

I love the show, and thanks for having me on.

Take care, Patrick.

Okay, great.

Bye-bye.

Hope you’re better.

Bye-bye.

You know, I’m thinking, too, of the term going south.

Oh, that’s a great one, yeah.

His condition is going south.

I mean, I have really good feelings about the south.

Right.

But it’s a form of the idea that down on a map is the south, right?

Yeah.

So if you’re going south, you’re going down.

Yeah.

And then things are declining.

Yeah.

One of the problems that we have with downhill is that that’s part of the language also used to describe graphs.

And there’s some numbers that you want to look like a downward ski slope.

And there’s some numbers that you want to look like an upward ski.

So you start to use the language of up and down in business.

And they can mean very different positive or negative things depending, right?

I want the interest rates to stay down.

Yes.

Right?

But I want the profits to go up.

Exactly. 877-929-9673.