downalator

English

Alternative forms

down-alator

Etymology

Blend of down +‎ escalator

Pronunciation

Audio (US): (file)

Noun

downalator (plural downalators)

(humorous, informal, rare) an escalator going downwards
Antonym: upalator
- 1960, 38:20 and 42:05 from the start, in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (motion picture):
  “Your own true love has set his foot on the first step of the down-alator.”
  “The what?”
  “Opposite number of the escalator. The down-alator. It leads to the place where all bad critics go.”
  […]
  “I just don't want you on that down-alator, that's all.”
  “The what?”
  “Never mind.”
- 1988 May 29, Bob O’Sullivan, “Going Down an Elevator Is Rarely Uplifting”, in Los Angeles Times‎^[1]:
  One of my children solved that one 25 years ago when he was little more than a toddler. As we were walking through a department store he told me he wanted to ride the “upalator,” but that the “downalator” was too scary for him.
  Wouldn’t it be simpler to call them the upalator and the downalator? The only exception might be the escalator in the Centrum, the big department store in Warsaw. If I remember correctly, that machine only went up. It had no “down” counterpart.
- 2008 November 6, Richard Corliss, “Jean Claude Van Damme in JCVD.”, in Time‎^[2]:
  He was right: JCVD — which opens this weekend in New York City, and Nov. 14 in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose and Washington, D.C. — is the best movie Van Damme ever made (granted, not the highest encomium), and a cogent, probing, funny critique on celebrity in its downalator phase.
- 2012 June 29, Peggy Noonan, “Noonan: Obama Has a Good Day”, in The Wall Street Journal‎^[3]:
  To the presidential politics of it: For the first time in months, the president looks like he's on the Uppalator, not the Downalator.
- 2013 February 23, “Razzies put bite on ‘Twilight’ as worst picture”, in AP News‎^[4]:
  “He’s an enormous star who is on what I call the ‘down-alator’ of his career,” Wilson said. “He’s about to step off the same cliff Eddie Murphy stepped off about 10 years ago. Eddie Murphy has never come back, and Murphy is more talented.”