downwards

UK/ˈdaʊnwədz/US/ˈdaʊnwɚdz/

adverbB1+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,221 of 15,258leans written

Downwards means towards a lower place or level. Face downwards, revised downwards, spiralling downwards.

Britain uses downwards as the adverb and downward as the adjective, and America uses downward for both. Revised downwards is the standard phrase for a forecast that has got worse.

Definitions of downwards

1adverbdownwardsTowards a lower place or level.B1+
“The path winds downwards through the woods to the river.”

downwards is a direction.

Also accepted in games: downward

Where it comes from

Middle English
doun
English
down
English, today
downwards

Built from

doune · Middle English — down
adūne · Old English — down, downward
ofdūne · Old English — down (literally “off the hill”)
of · Old English — of, off of

From down + -wards. down comes 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

Practise this word

downwards in the wild

A concave function is also synonymously called concave downwards, concave down, convex upwards, convex cap, or upper convex.
Concave function
The downwards funarg problem arises from passing a function as a parameter to another function call.
Funarg problem
The growth of abdominal hair follows the same pattern on nearly all mammals, vertically from the pubic area upwards and from the thorax downwards to the navel.
Abdominal hair
Bits look similar to a twist drill or end mill; some cut on the upward twist, and some cut downwards.
Rotary saw
The cutting edge on the flutes actually slices (either upwards or downwards) through the material which means that they can cut in any direction.
Rotary saw

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the doune family

down

downwards — used about once every 20,553 pages · #13,221 · point at the bar for the others

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