adown

English

Etymology

From Middle English adoun, from Old English adūn, earlier ofdūne (“down”), from of dūne (“off the hill”) (compare Latin ad vallum > Old French à val, used in the same way).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈdaʊn/

Adverb

adown (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Down, downward; to or in a lower place.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 24:

     Thrice did she sink adown.

   • 1830, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “[Sibylline Leaves.] Love, Hope, and Patience in Education.”, in The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge […], volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1880, →OCLC, page 334:

     [S]o / Do these upbear the little world below / Of Education,—Patience, Love, and Hope. / Methinks, I see them group'd in seemly show, / The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope, / And robes that touching as adown they flow, / Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow.

   • 1859, Ferna Vale, Natalie; or, A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds:

     Many a family circle wept as they looked upon the familiar places, which would know their lost ones no more; but ah, chide me not, kind reader, in thus leading you adown to the coldness of death, in setting before you that which causes your tender heart to shudder.

Preposition

adown

1. (archaic) Down.
   • 1875, Charlotte Riddell, The Uninhabited House:

     I fell from one dream into another; found myself wandering through impossible places; […] peering out into the darkness, to catch a sight of a vague figure standing somewhere in the shadow, and looking, with the sun streaming into my eyes and blinding me, adown long white roads filled with a multitude of people […]

   • 1881, Oscar Wilde, “[Rosa Mystica.] Rome Unvisited.”, in Poems, London: David Bogue, […], →OCLC, canto IV, page 47:

     Before yon field of trembling gold
     Is garnered into dusty sheaves,
     Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves
     Flutter as birds adown the wold, […]

   • 1906 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “After Twenty Years”, in The Four Million, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co, →OCLC, page 214:

     The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. […] Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:adown.

Anagrams

• daown

Scots

Preposition

adown

1. alternative form of adoon

Adverb

adown (not comparable)

1. alternative form of adoon