Downstairs

How to spell downstairs

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce downstairs

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does downstairs mean?

1. adverbTo or on a lower floor of a building, reached by descending the stairs.
2. adjectiveSituated on a lower floor of a building.
3. nounThe lower floor or ground level of a building, considered as a whole.

Downstairs in a sentence

• adverb

  She heard the post arrive and hurried downstairs to collect it.

• adjective

  The flat has a tiny downstairs bathroom near the kitchen.

• noun

  The whole of downstairs smelled of fresh paint after the renovation.

• adverb

  The children were already downstairs eating breakfast when he woke.

• adjective

  They converted the downstairs study into a guest room.

• noun

  The noise carried from downstairs up into the bedrooms.

Where does downstairs come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound of two very old native English words. 'Down' descends from the Old English phrase ofdūne, meaning 'off the hill' or 'from the height', which over time was clipped to dūne and then to the plain 'down' we use today. 'Stairs' goes back to the Old English stǣger, a word tied to the verb stīgan, meaning 'to climb or ascend', so a staircase was literally a thing for climbing. The two words were fused into a single adverb, 'downstairs', during the seventeenth century to describe motion toward a lower floor, and the adjective and noun uses followed soon after. Because both elements are spelled exactly as they sound to a modern ear, the only minor trap is remembering it is written as one solid word rather than two. Its mirror twin 'upstairs' was formed in precisely the same way and at roughly the same time.

How the word is built

• down (adverb of direction, from Old English ofdūne 'off the hill')
• stairs (from Old English stǣger 'a step or staircase')