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DOWNSTAIRS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
On or of lower floors of a building
Example:
the downstairs (or downstair) phone
Synonyms:
downstair; downstairs
Classified under:
Similar:
ground-floor (on the floor closest to level with the ground)
Antonym:
upstairs (on or of upper floors of a building)
II. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
On a floor below
Example:
the tenants live downstairs
Synonyms:
below; down the stairs; downstairs; on a lower floor
Classified under:
Antonym:
upstairs (on a floor above)
Context examples:
I dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I laughed all the way downstairs, but it was a little pathetic, also to think of the poor man having to mend his own clothes.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
"Now, Carter, be on the alert," he said to this last: "I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all."
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
You must now come downstairs with me.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
One morning, about ten days after Mrs. Churchill's decease, Emma was called downstairs to Mr. Weston, who “could not stay five minutes, and wanted particularly to speak with her.”
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Miss Tilney gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a minute they ran downstairs together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for General Tilney was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand, and having, on the very instant of their entering, pulled the bell with violence, ordered Dinner to be on table directly!
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us downstairs.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The noise from downstairs was as that of a score of battling fiends.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I ran downstairs and looked in the sitting-room. Not there!
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
