down east
down east noun: northeastern New England (particularly the easternmost section of the U.S. state of Maine) and Canada's Maritime provinces (sometimes including the Gaspé Peninsula and Newfoundland), an area that corresponds to the historical French territory of Acadia.
Noun
down east
- Northeastern New England (particularly the easternmost section of the U.S. state of Maine) and Canada's Maritime provinces (sometimes including the Gaspé Peninsula and Newfoundland), an area that corresponds to the historical French territory of Acadia.
Adjective
down east
Adverb
down east
Origin of down east
* Typically traced to 1817 nautical terminology referring to direction not location: in the warm months, the prevailing winds along the Atlantic coast of New England and Canada blow from the southwest, meaning ships sail downwind to go east.
Words formed from down east
Questions about down east
- What does down east mean?
- Down east means northeastern New England (particularly the easternmost section of the U.S. state of Maine) and Canada's Maritime provinces (sometimes including the Gaspé Peninsula and Newfoundland), an area that corresponds to the historical French territory of Acadia.
- What part of speech is down east?
- Down east can be a noun, an adjective or an adverb.
Words near down east in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: down east (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “down east.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/down_east. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.