Where does the word down come from?
Well, this preposition got its start in Old English, the ancestor to Modern English. The word for “hill” back then was:
“dūn“
This word is cognate with the Modern English “dune”.
It appears to be derived from an ancient Celtic word meaning something like a “hill-fort” (where we get the Irish “dún” meaning “fort” and, as an earlier borrowing, the Old English “tūn” where we get today’s “town”).
When expressing something going “down”, an Old English phrase was:
“Ofdūne“
This word means something like “Off the hill” (Old English didn’t use “the” as often or in as many situations as in Modern English).
Eventually, the phrase wore down from:
“Ofdūne” to “Adūne“
And then, the prefix wore off, giving us simply:
“Dūne“
The Middle English version was:
“Doun“
Finally, the Great Vowel shift happened, which basically turned (using the International Phonetic Alphabet):
[du:n] to [doun] to [daun]
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