Downwards

How to spell downwards

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce downwards

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does downwards mean?

1. adverbToward a lower position, level, or place.

Downwards in a sentence

• The lift carried them slowly downwards to the basement car park.

• House prices have been drifting downwards for three straight months.

Where does downwards come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is native English, descending from the Old English adverb 'adunweardes', which combined 'dun' (meaning 'hill' and, in the phrase 'of dune', 'off the hill', hence 'down') with the suffix '-weardes', meaning 'turned toward' or 'in the direction of'. That same '-weardes' element, built on the verb meaning 'to turn', also gives us the tails of 'toward', 'forward', and 'backward', and it explains why so many direction words share that '-ward(s)' ending. The genitive '-es' on the end is the ancestor of the modern '-s', which originally marked an adverb of direction; this is why 'downwards' carries a final 's' that 'downward' does not. Over the centuries the older form was clipped and reshaped into plain 'down' for everyday use, while 'downwards' survived as the fuller adverb describing motion toward a lower place. The spelling trap is purely that trailing '-s', kept in this form and dropped in the bare adjective 'downward'.

How the word is built

• down (lower position)
• -wards (adverbial suffix meaning 'in the direction of')