Going Places Adverbs

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When talking about places you go, what do up, down and over refer to in relation to direction?

If there's no object then they function as adverbs.

I believe it's to do with geography

A person from Kansas may go up to Minnesota down to Texas and over to new York.

At least that is my understanding of it.

If the question was referring to equivalencies in direction then yes:

south - down
north - up
west - out to
east - over to

In my experience, if you are going to town, your geographical/topographical location is unimportant as it is nearly always 'into' , usually 'down' , rarely 'up'.

Here it would depend which town.
The ones north of me would be "up to" even if it's just the next village up.
Or, maybe I'm just pedantic.

(Me?)

Pedantic? Noooooo

I'm pretty sure it's a colloquial thing, but have no evidence to back that up.

The direction, not the pedantry

What about "off", in directives like FO? ^

They must be adverbs too.

(Sorry, OP)

I think so , not only FO but also F up , F Over , also apologies to OP

I had some relatives that lived in rural West Virginia, near the peak of a wooded mountain.

Their son gave me simple directions to their home...directions on how to get to the base of the mountain and then, after that, "Turn Up".

That's cute.

My daughter is geographically disabled and has no sense of direction at all.
She gets her adverbs wrong all the time and it messes with my head.
She'll say: "I'm gonna go down to _________ " (somewhere far north).
"It was up near Grammy's house ..." (Grammy is south).

I'm dumbfounded she's survived as long as she has, especially driving.

It all depends.

The convention on maps is to put north at the top. So you go "up" north, and "down" south. And "east" and "west" are just "go east" and "go west".

However some lady on TV made herself look really stupid by following that convention when she talked about going "up" the Rhine river to denote a voyage north from Switzerland to the Netherlands passing through Germany.

The source of the Rhine is in the Alps, and it flows north past Germany and France to its mouth in the Netherlands where it empties into the North Sea. So if you're sailing north on the Rhine you are going DOWN the Rhine (because its down stream that way). NOT "up" the Rhine, even though its up on the map. If you're traveling by river...the flow of the stream trumps the direction on the map. So on the Nile, and on the Rhine up north is "down the river" because its down stream. You would also be going "down" in altitude (going from Bern Switzerland to Rotterdam Netherlands).

Then there is down town. If you leave the suburbs for the more built up core of the city then you're going "down town".

But then...WTF is "up town"?

Going "up town" does NOT mean going back to the suburbs. It means staying in the core of the city, but going from the business district to the residential tenements that are also in the middle of the city (going from lower Manhatten to Harlem). Took a while for me to grasp that.

Vulgarity is usually informal, and as such I believe it doesn't follow grammatical rules.

On the railways, "Up" is usually towards the largest capital city where the mileages start from. Down is going the other way. (Here in UK there are mileposts every quarter of a mile on the railway which start at 0 at London ad fan out from there. These mileposts are a crucial safety feature when communicating to signalboxes where ones train is if there was an accident or if ones train has broken down, or if there is a track issue or something or someone on the track that should not be there).
So "Up" is normally towards the capitol city and down is away from the capitol city, and this is known by all railway staff. Certain circumstances where some lines are distant and link two other lines sideways to the capital, they restart the 0 at one end, and this will be marked on the mileposts by showing previous milage reading and restarted 0 milage reading. They restart the milages usually from the most noticably principle point (E.G. another large town or city or where the branch line comes off the main line etc).

On road maps for travelling on roads, "Up" is alwayd north and "Down" is always south. They do this to simplify things as there are so many roads and motorways and other things that it would be confusing to do it any other way!

On aircraft, "Up" is in the sky and "Down" is heading towards land for obvious reasons!

On a sea going vessel up and down happen with every wave!