up and down

1. 1.

   moving backward and forward along a given course

   “he walked up and down the locker room”

   “all up and down the Eastern seaboard”
2. 2.

   alternately upward and downward

   “he eyed him up and down”

Questions about up and down

What does up and down mean?

up and down means "moving backward and forward along a given course". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is up and down a common word?

up and down is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.