Asklemmy

43908 readers

1315 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

160

What does "upstate" mean in the US? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

84 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I hear it in movies so the time. We're going upstate. I went upstate. Etc

I never hear downstate, or similar. Does it just mean going north?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I'm probably wrong, but I think it means somewhere north of the capital city, and maybe it's only used in New York

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You are very wrong. Albany is part of "upstate NY" and Albany is literally the capital city... In NY it means basically anywhere that isn't NYC.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Oh well, I tried. Thanks for clarifying!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Ok, so upstate means north of the capital or north NYC if in New York?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

The term upstate has no relation to the capital city, that was a mistaken assertion. It isn’t used very widely at all, it’s just a local term in a couple of states for their northern portions. Most states don’t have an area that is referred to as upstate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

In NY state it essentially means anywhere north of NYC, the capital city Albany is upstate NY. It doesn't seem to mean north of the capital in any state unless that capital is at the southern part.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Only New York. It means all the parts of New York state that aren't New York City

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Long Island is excluded too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Is Long Island named Long Island because its long?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It appears so, it was called other things by native people but the Dutch seem to be the first to call it Long Island in the 1600s. Many geographic features in the area have similar sort of names, like Short Hill, East River, West River, Indian Hill, Short Beach, Beaver Swamp, the colonists really weren't very clever with their naming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

yes. 100 miles or so

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Upstate in NY is literally the entire state other than NYC and Long Island.