I am talking about a hilly region.

I was driving up the road and first I get to see a Salon and next a grocery shop.

If someone ask me about the salon who knows the grocery shop, can I say:

The salon is down the grocery shop.

Thanks in advance.

  • 2
    That only makes sense to me as a UK English expression—and it wouldn't be used in that sense. I'm down the pub means I'm down at the pub. But to say the salon is down [at] the grocery shop would be taking the colloquial language and repurposing it. It might be meaningful—but it would be quite strange. Not only that, but it seems unlikely that a salon would be located—temporarily or otherwise—in a grocery shop in the first place. And even if that is fine, it doesn't mean the situation that you describe. But I'm not a UK native . . . – Jason Bassford Aug 1 '19 at 4:27
  • @JasonBassford What would you say in this context? – Kumar sadhu Aug 1 '19 at 4:29
  • There are many ways it could be expressed. Personally, I would likely say that, as I drove, the salon came before the grocery shop. Or the salon was closer than the grocery shop. But if I were to use down specifically, either of the answers already here would do. – Jason Bassford Aug 1 '19 at 5:25

The use of up or down to describe relative positions requires either an assumption the listener understands the context, or providing explicit context with a compound proposition or separate noun.

If the speaker has reason to assume the listener knows about the hill, it's possible to shorten the phrase to:

The salon is down from the grocery shop.

The above is uncommon and would only be used in casual conversation where the speaker is confident in the listeners familiarity with the intended point of reference. It's possible that up or down could refer to anything from geographic locations to an abstract concept when using this form.

If this assumption cannot be made then the speaker must provide explicit context in the form of a compound preposition:

The salon is downhill from the grocery shop.

or the equivalent expanded form:

The salon is down the hill from the grocery shop.

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Your sentence is missing the word "from". So you might say:

The salon is down from the grocery shop.

But using "down" and "up" like that can be confusing. You seem to be using "down" almost literally, since you said you were driving "up" the road. And since you first encountered the Salon, and only then the Shop, then of course we'd expect the first to be "below" the second.

But more often "down" in this context would mean "beyond" or "afterwards". Your choice is not necessarily wrong, but it could be confusing. I think the problem is that you described an ordering in your initial drive. FIRST you got to the Salon, and THEN you got to the Shop. That might make some people think that the Shop is down from the Salon, even though in terms of altitude it's the opposite.

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