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upstate

UK/ˈʌp.steɪt/US/ˈʌp.steɪt/
adverbC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,244 of 15,258neutral

Upstate means in or towards the northern part of a state. Live upstate, drive upstate, upstate New York.

It is American and belongs above all to New York, where upstate means everything that is not the city — which is most of the state and is a cultural division as much as a geographic one. There is no downstate in most people's speech, though the word exists.

Definitions of upstate

  1. 1adverbupstateIn or towards the northern part of a state.C1

    “Every summer we drive upstate to my grandparents' cabin by the lake.”

upstate is a direction.

Where it comes from

From up + state.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

upstate in the wild

  • Major cities across upstate New York from east to west include the state capital of Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

    Upstate New York

  • The 1825 opening of the Erie Canal across upstate New York transformed the economy of the region and the state.

    Upstate New York

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.