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Discussion » Questions » Language » Why do "lockdown" and "lockup" mean the same thing? I detest the English language. ~

Why do "lockdown" and "lockup" mean the same thing? I detest the English language. ~

Posted - March 21, 2018

Responses


  • 6023
    I've only heard "lockup" used in terms of jail/prison ... and "lockdown" only when securing something from outside attack.
      March 21, 2018 8:40 AM MDT
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  • 52903
      A lockdown can also occur inside a prison, such as when an escape has been discovered, when there's a riot, when there's a quarantine, when an ifficer's keys or weapon are missing, when the electricity or plumbing fails, etc. 

    ~
      March 21, 2018 8:17 PM MDT
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  • 52903
      You can lockup the brakes on a vehicle or aircraft, supplies or rations can be placed in lockup for safekeeping, lockup can also mean to fix something in certain settings. 
    ~
      March 21, 2018 8:20 PM MDT
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  • 14795
    Who says it does.......you need a propper intwerpiter to advise you I fink.....:(  
      March 21, 2018 8:42 AM MDT
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  • "Up" and "down", despite their apparent opposite meanings seem to allow some interchangeability in idiomatic verbal expressions. In the phrase "lock up", "up" doesn't mean "skyward" here, it's a particle signifying completion (as in to "drink up", "clean up"--none of these involve moving upward). Likewise, "down" can be paired with verbs to signify completion or to intensify the meaning: "lockdown" isn't just locking a place, it's locking it down. (It's really locking it). 

    In my young-person slang, to be "up" for something and to be "down" for the something mean the exact same thing. "I'm up for that/I'm down for that". That one's harder to explain. My guess is that "up", which has a meaning of "awake", came to mean "ready, willing", thus "I'm up for a game of Scrabble", and "down", I'm unsure of how the meaning arose, but it's gained a meaning of "comfortable with, willing" as in "I'm down to drink"; thus you have virtually the same meaning in words of originally opposite meaning. 
      March 21, 2018 9:52 AM MDT
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  • 5354
    Thse are 2 different words, with different and distinct meanings.

    Lock-down: noun creating a secure zone where nothing can get in or out without official permission Usually a temporary measure to let initial confusions get resolved.

    lockup: can be used as noun or verb
    noun: Jail.
    verb: Lock up (in the lockup;)
      March 21, 2018 10:04 AM MDT
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  • .

    7268
    They mean entirely different things:

    Lockdown = you will get out...soon. 


    Lockup = you are prisoner indefinitely.

    Either way the decision is not yours unless you hold the 
    keys. 
      March 21, 2018 1:00 PM MDT
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  • 7280
    I though the answer to this was simple---turns out it's not.

    Social change sometimes results in the decrease in the comprehension of a term and an increase in its extension---and then we struggle to increase the comprehension once more in response.

    https://www.dcsdk12.org/safety-and-security/the-difference-between-a-lockout-and-lockdown
      March 21, 2018 2:56 PM MDT
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  • 46117
    Lockdown is different.


    lockdown, lockup
    Posted on April 20, 2013 | 3 Comments

    All Friday, as Boston and surrounding towns and cities were under a “shelter in place” order, everyone on the news kept referring to it as a lockdown, or as being on lockdown.

    Lockdown? As though Boston were some kind of lockup?

    I used to live in Boston (or actually in Medford and then Somerville, but part of the same melted-together urbanity), and I can tell you it’s not a prison, even if it does have many institutions (among which a striking number of good universities and colleges). So it’s interesting to see a term applied there that came into being to refer to prisoners being confined to cells, as though citizens were at liberty only at discretion of their warders, the police.

    But, then, what other term works? Curfew communicates an overnight confinement (and comes from French couvre-feu, ‘cover fire’). Stay-inside orders or similar terms – or the official shelter in place – may be descriptive, but lockdown simply has an impact the others lack. Lock: a word that conveys a constrained freezing of movement, and in sound moves from a flowing liquid to the hardest stop we have, /k/. It’s like a river locked up with ice. Down: in place, fixed. You can easily see a bolt sliding down to fix a door firmly in place, and the occupant of a cell (or house) being held confined like a butterfly with a cup clapped down over it.



    And there lies the difference between lockdown and lockup (and their associated verbs lock down and lock up).


    What’s up? A hand help up to stop you. A wall thrown up in front of your face. The stoppage of motion: we run up to an obstacle and end up at a place when our time is up. We fill up a tank, of course, and we look up a word in the dictionary. Up in these senses conveys motion that culminates or is blocked (like a sink stopped up or your nose stuffed up) or simply unable to continue (because full, like a container – your nose stuffed up again). It can be a containment, as with something walled up. It can even be a constrainment that might yet be broken free of, as if you’re tied up today but your schedule is free tomorrow. So when you are locked up, you are in a containment or cessation of motion, a point of at least temporary culmination. Like how the sound in your mouth is abruptly contained with the /p/ in up. (Which is not to say that the sound is responsible for the meaning.)

    And what’s down? Not something stopped in motion, but something fixed at a point, anchored. Held down, nailed down, tied down. Down actually has a few different isotopes: it can communicate a motion in direction without specific endpoint (settle down), or a motion that moves downward and comes to a fixed point (set down, tie down), or – in adjectives made with past participles – fixity in a place without specific reference to prior motion. If you are cooped up you may still be able to move within confines, but if you are pinned down you can’t move at all. Interestingly, the word down starts with a stop /d/ and then fades off with a nasal /n/ – not quite so iconic – but it does have that closing-in diphtong in the middle.

    In short, the difference between up and down in these words is that up is like putting your hands forward and up, palms outward, as against a wall, and down is like driving your index finger downward to a stopping point. Locked up: nope, stop, not getting out, kept in. Locked down: staying put, going nowhere. Up is to stop as down is to done, perhaps.

    Well, anyway, Bostonians were kept in but they have now been let out; they were confined but now they are free again. The suspect was hiding in a boat, but no one knew that; because he could have been anywhere, everyone in Boston was in the same boat. Once the police got a lock on his location, everyone else could unlock: his number was up, and they could let their guards down.

    This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at March 21, 2018 8:29 PM MDT
      March 21, 2018 8:27 PM MDT
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  • 46117
    YOU'D BETTER READ THAT.     Is this present-perfect tense?  (I hated that)
      March 21, 2018 8:46 PM MDT
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