Asklemmy

It means the Northern part of the state, typically when the state has a North-South cultural divide. It's not exclusive to the US though, I've seen it used in places like Sao Paulo and Lagos before. Anywhere where one locality serves as a drain on the rest will get people to refer to different halves of the place, I guess nobody learned from Athens and Sparta.

Upstate is used in South Carolina as well, used to refer to the western and more mountainous part of the state. The eastern non-mountainous part of the state is called low-country.

I'm probably wrong, but I think it means somewhere north of the capital city, and maybe it's only used in New York

In Illinois you might hear "downstate" to refer to anything south of Champaign-Urbana

A lot of people are saying it's primarily a NY thing, so I'd just chime in to say we use it in PA as well, at least in the Philly area, to refer to the northern parts of the state.

Not much more to it than youre going far enough north to be out of your city's metro area, but staying in the same state. In PA I'd say upstate probably starts around the Poconos. I think new Yorkers kind of tend to use it to refer to the rest of the state, we wouldn't tend to do that here, Central and Western PA are different things than Upstate PA, although there is definitely some overlap and there's not exactly clearly defined borders.

I don't know how many other states use the same terminology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's pretty common in other largish states with larger population densities in the southern part of the state and lower densities in the north (I don't know off the top of my head which other states that would apply to, maybe it's only PA and NY)

Like others are saying, it is a new york thing. But in general, upstate means further from the city than where the speaker lives. Until you crouse some imaginary line, then downstate means closer to the city. Comonly, but not always, it is used in a derogatory sense. They city people think the upstaters are rural hicks. And the upstaters think the city people couldn't survive outside a city. Source, I grew up in an area that didn't consider itself upstate, but all the city people sure did.

Outside main city? For NY it's any area outside New York City. Like Albany or Rochester.

In Michigan, there is "downstate" it means heading to the southern part of the state.

Echoing a lot of the people here, I've personally only heard it used in New York state

As others have said, going to the northern part. Depending on the state it usually carries with it the idea of a change of scenery abd culture.

For example a New Yorker may say “upstate” referring to the more rural areas.

Similar to how “out west” in early US history meant “wild and untamed country full of potential, opportunities and danger”

While I’ve never heard down state I have heard similar.

“Down south” or “below I10” or “Cajun country” in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi referring to the gulf, more Catholic Cajun areas. And down south in other states referring to the southern states.

It's a New York thing. That state loosely divides into two regions: New York City to the south, and everything else to the north ("upstate"). I have heard people refer to the New York City area as "downstate" but that term is less common.

Similarly, Manhattan is loosely split into its northern portion (uptown), middle portion (midtown), and southern portion (downtown).

It's a New York thing to refer to the rural Northern and Western parts of New York State that are not New York City. No one (or at least very very few) outside of New York State uses it to refer to any other place.

I guess you might be hearing it movies set in New York City, which is in the southern tip of the state of New York. All the other notable cities, the Catskill mountains, Niagara Falls, and other attractions are all further north, or upstate. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the expression got picked up by a wider crowd to mean “north”.

My understanding is that it means going, loosely, to the opposite side of the state of the major metropolitan area in that state. Upstate NY is the northwest part, upstate MA is the west part, upstate PA is the northeast part. I'm looking around, and it seems to also 1) only be used on a few states, 2) usually is on the north half (but not always), and 3) is somewhat interchangable with "rural".

it's very common in the greater NYC area to refer to the rest of the state, esp. the more rural parts (even if a lot of the state does not consider itself "upstate").

In NY it means "north or west, but definitely not east or south of NYC

Yes, the northern part of the state. Typically its also far away from major cities into a more rural area.

upstate: situated or occurring in the northern part of a state, especially the northern part of New York State as contrasted with New York City. "upstate New York"

Yeah! I've never heard it in BC, Canada. "I'm going upstate BC." "Prince George?! Fort Saint John!?!"

Doesn't sound right.