Hanuman_2000

It's not "walking down". It's "down a road", like "on a road".

A man is walking down a road. =
A man is walking on a road. He is moving forward in a downward direction. (The road slopes downward.)

A man is walking up a road. =
A man is walking on a road. He is moving forward in an upward direction. (The road slopes upward.)

Now the strange thing is,

CJ, how do you recognise when to use up or down? Could you use the addresses of the houses?
For ex.: My house has the number 1552, the house next to mine (to the right) has #1565, the other house next to mine (to the left) has # 1488, I live in a flat street and I see a man walking towards the right. Must I say he is walking UP the street?

I have never known of a case where the address had any influence on "up" and "down" in this context. The direction of the slope is the best guide. Absent a slope, perhaps "up" is used more when the motion is toward the speaker; down when away from the speaker???
Or maybe "up" and "down" are equally acceptable in any case.

On a map, north is "up" and south is "down", however, so

I don't mind so much about whether the "down" in "down the road" is an adverb or a preposition because usually we don't use a passive sentence with "the road" as the subject even if the "down" is an adverb. What I am interested in is whether the frequencies for the uses of "walk down X" and "walk up X" would depend on the noun X.

Results of Google survey
(AmE/

Sorry Jim, but I'm on a little mission to make these threads somewhat less student Q and expert A in style.

He was walking down a path.

Sorry, what was he walking down?

If the enquirer asked about the meaning of "walking down" in the second sentence, would you still give the answer you first gave?

Further to CalifJim's and Paco's useful analyses, some local data:

In BrE, it's quite usual to say 'walk down the road' where nothing hill-ish is involved, i.e. 'toward a point away from the speaker or the speaker's point of reference'. 'Down' here is an adverb, meaning 'along' (thus 'walk along the road').

Old-school BrE stand-up comedians often start their jokes with 'I was

Hello MrP

In BrE, it's quite usual to say 'walk down the road' where nothing hill-ish is involved, i.e. 'toward a point away from the speaker or the speaker's point of reference'. 'Down' here is an adverb, meaning 'along' (thus 'walk along the road').

BrE says 'walk up the path' mostly in contexts where a building is at the other end of the path. Thus 'to walk up to th

woodcutter,

No, not exactly the same answer, but essentially the same answer.
The difference would be because this is a question, not a statement.
Nevertheless, the idea is that "walking down" is not a primary unit of meaning in such a structure, whether question or statement.

In question form the question word moves to the beginning.

He was walking down w