Other forms: downs
Down is the layer of tiny soft feathers next to a bird skin, under the flat outer ones. It is what puffs up inside a winter jacket or a duvet: almost weightless, and warm because it traps air.
Everyone meets the other down first — the direction. You go down the stairs, sit down, turn the music down, and that down is a different word that happens to be spelled the same. The feather one never takes a plural: a coat filled with down, never downs. On labels you will see duck down and goose down, and the adjective downy means covered in fine soft hair — a baby downy head, a downy peach. The direction word stretches a long way too: a team can be two goals down, a server that is down has stopped working, and someone feeling down is low in spirits.
1noundownThe soft fine feathers under a bird outer feathers, used to fill jackets and bedding.~21%
“The pillow was stuffed with goose down.”
2adverbplaceTo or in a lower place or position.~68%
“Put the box down by the door and take your coat off.”
3prepositionhigherFrom a higher to a lower part of something; along.~7%
“She walked down the hill without stopping once.”
4adjectivesadSad and without energy (informal).~2%
“He has been down since the results came out.”
5adjectiveworkingNot working, of a computer or system.~2%
“The booking system is down again this morning.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (11 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
down is a kind of feather.
The direction word began as a hill. Old English ofdūne meant literally off the hill — of, off, plus dūn, hill, the same dūn behind dune and the grassy downs. Said fast enough for long enough it wore away to adūne, then dūne, then down, so every time you sit down you are, in the oldest sense, coming off a hill. That history belongs to the direction; the feathers are a separate word with a story of their own.
Middle English
doun
English, today
down
Built from
From Middle English doun. From Middle English doun, doune (“down”), from Old English dūne (“down”), aphetic form of adūne (“down, downward”), from earlier ofdūne (“down”) literally “off the hill”, from of (“of, off of”) + dūn (“hill, mount, dune, down”). More at Etymology 2 below. For the development from directional phrases to prepositions, compare dene, dāle, whence dal. Compare also stq, del. Cognate with Scots doon (“down”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA