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This context comes from the TV Show "Twin Peaks". It's a scene in which Agent Cooper (FBI agent) records a voice recorder message for Diane (his secretary) while driving to the titular town of Twin Peaks to investigate a crime. He mentions a meal he had on the way there.

Diane, if you ever get up this way, that cherry pie is worth a stop

This is how my Polish brain understands this sentence: "If you ever go north following the route that I took, that cherry pie is worth a stop"

I've got 2 problems with this sentence that prevent me from grasping it entirely:

Problem 1. The usage of "get" instead of "go/travel". Is this the correct definition of "get" in this context:

(intransitive, with various prepositions, such as into, over, or behind; for specific idiomatic senses see individual entries get into, get over, etc.) To adopt, assume, arrive at, or progress towards (a certain position, location, state). The actors are getting into position. When are we going to get to London? I'm getting into a muddle. We got behind the wall. (Wictionary)?

  1. Why isn't it "through this way"? "This way" isn't the destination of the travel (north is).

Unless I've got the whole thing wrong, in which case, let me know :)

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  • I'm resisting a ministry of silly walks answer ~
    – Mike M
    Commented Sep 2 at 13:31
  • Mike M I tried to watch it on YouTube to understand your comment but the ridiculousness of Monthy Python was always too difficult to bear for me. And it's coming from a guy watching Twin Peaks :)
    – Static Bounce
    Commented Sep 2 at 14:34
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    "Up" doesn't necessarily mean north - it could also mean "higher altitude" (since the town of Twin Peaks is in the mountains) or even just "along" as in, "head up the road", which doesn't necessarily mean north or uphill.
    – Canadian Yankee
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:09
  • @StaticBounce -- indeed, it would be the properly wrong answer, but native speakers are quite aware that it can be funny if you think of "this way" as how - how to come or how to walk - rather than where
    – Mike M
    Commented Sep 2 at 20:14
  • If get means "arrive", why would you use "through"? You don't arrive through a place!
    – Stuart F
    Commented Sep 3 at 1:33

5 Answers 5

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"This way" can be an idiomatic way of referring to the general area in which you are located. So "if you ever get up this way" is a way of saying "if you are ever in this area".

It's a very casual way of referring to an area and might imply a general direction rather than an area defined by regional borders. "Up this way" might refer to the northern area of a country or state, for example.

It can also carry a subtext - for example, if you really wanted someone to come and visit you but didn't want to pressure them into doing so, you might say "if you're ever this way, you should come and see me", suggesting that they might visit you if they were in the general area for some other reason.

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    "Up this way" could also literally refer to altitude. The show in question is set in Washington state, where the most populous cities are on the coast and the more rural parts (like the titular town of Twin Peaks) are "up" in more mountainous terrain.
    – Canadian Yankee
    Commented Sep 2 at 15:51
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    @StaticBounce Yes, I'd say that "[direction] this way" is pretty much equivalent to those phrases. The "up" in this case indicates some directionality from the person Cooper's addressing, suggesting that Diane is in some sense "down there" with respect to where Coop is (though perhaps only in his imagination). The "up" could refer to the north of a map, or literally being higher up in the mountains. He could also say "over this way" to make it more neutral.
    – Will Vousden
    Commented Sep 2 at 17:19
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    @StaticBounce It's certainly used loosely but not arbitarily. If something is south, we'd say "down there", and if they are east or west we'd say "over there". Some people will correct you if you get it wrong. But, if something was, say in a north-westerly direction then we'd just say 'up'. That's as loose as it gets.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Sep 3 at 7:24
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    There's a a few questions on this site specifically about "up" and "down" when talking about geography. "up" could refer to "North" or "altitude" or "towards a bigger city" or "towards a wealthier area" or something else, and there tends to exist consensus about which meaning to apply, but the consensus is different in every region.
    – Stef
    Commented Sep 3 at 9:42
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    @ Astralbee I didin't hear anyone saying it. I just provided a dictionary definition that contains this example. On the other hand I've heard people yelling "down here" or "up here!" when their location wasn't in the north or higher vertically. I suppose this is what this definition describes when it says "arbitrarily".
    – Static Bounce
    Commented Sep 3 at 13:54
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Twin Peaks is set in a remote logging town in the Pacific Northwest.

If you ever get up this way in that context means "If you ever find yourself up in this part of the country", that is, "If you ever have occasion to be up in this part of the country."

In AmE, we use "up this way" for places north of the listener, and "down this way" for places south of the listener, and "out this way" for locations more-or-less east or west of the listener.

get + {status} has the aspect of a completed, fully effected, action or state.

When do you get here? [when do you arrive?]

Text me when you get there. [send me a text when you have reached the destination]

So the meaning is you are there, not that you are en route or making progress towards the place. It is the participle getting that has the progressive aspect, making-progress-towards, that you refer to.

We're not there yet but we're getting close.

Get vaccinated!

-- I'm getting vaccinated soon. Made an appointment.

"up this way" just means "up in this area" and the referent of "area" depends on the context. For example, if you live a half hour south of a large city, and are speaking on the phone with someone who runs an antique shop an hour north of the same city, they could say "If you're ever up this way, stop in. You might find the perfect antique lamp."

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    Up/down could also refer to altitude, I suppose, so like "up here in the mountains".
    – jcaron
    Commented Sep 3 at 12:39
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    But we wouldn't say "up this way" to refer to a place situated in a high altitude if the place was south of the listener. The cardinal directions are the more important consideration there. If the speaker lived in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the listener on the phone was in New York City at sea level, the speaker would say "If you get down this way" regardless of their altitude.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 3 at 14:26
  • @TimR I think there are exceptions to any rule and it just depends on context. If you went skiing with a friend and they were up a mountain waiting for you, then "let's take a picture when you get up this way" would make sense regardless on the cardinal directions. In fact I'm not sure you'd need to be more northerly or at higher altitude for that to work just fine. I think maybe as you get further from each other the cardinal directions become more important, common sense applies.
    – Wolfie
    Commented Sep 3 at 15:54
  • @Wolfie I would never use "when you get up this way" in that skiing context in the first place. I'd say "when you get up here". In the American English spoken by Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks it is used of a geographic region much larger than a mountain or ski slope. That's the way it is used. A metro area, a different county, the western or eastern or northern or southern section of one of the states, New England, the Florida panhandle, the southwest, the Pacific Northwest, the Lake District in New York.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 3 at 19:09
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"get up this way" in this context just means you are, for any reason, in the area. It does not imply any particular mode of transport nor the route taken. You could follow the same road north that he took, or you could fly into the local air strip from the opposite direction. It doesn't matter. All that is important is that you find yourself close enough to the café to go there for a piece of pie.
Usually, "get" more likely implies that the person is staying for some period of time (possibly a few hours, days or weeks).
"Through" implies that they are in transit, as in "passing through".
The travellers will not stop long at the location, if at all. They may only stay long enough to eat a piece of pie or refuel their car for example.

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    Well said. We could add that up (as opposed to north) could suggest "up" the mountain heights, or reaching the remoteness "up" here, out of the way, after an effort.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Sep 2 at 0:02
  • @YosefBaskin - we could write a book about this! In Britain, there is a tendency to say we go 'up' when we go north (there is a fixed phrase 'up north') and, having gone there, we might go back down south again. This is reversed in the south; we go down from London to the south and west. We might say we go over or across to some nearby place that is east or west of us. I do recall a 1982 song by a US group, the Bangles, called 'Going Down to Liverpool' which rang oddly in my born-in-London, adopted-by-Bristol ears.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Sep 2 at 8:26
  • We go down to places east of London as well. From Bristol I'd go down to Devon and up to London.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Sep 2 at 8:41
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    @MichaelHarvey I think that in the northern hemisphere, well at least the UK, we tend to think of north as up and down as south, also away from wherever you are. Where I live, Then there is the university thing of being "sent down" or expelled when it just means sent away/home.
    – Peter Jennings
    Commented Sep 2 at 15:05
  • I've never been there, but I suspect that our friends in the southern hemisphere also tend to think of north as up. Unlike the Ancient Egyptians, for whom up definitely meant south, corresponding to the flow of the Nile.
    – Michael Kay
    Commented Sep 4 at 8:54
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The existing answers do a good job describing the whole phrase's meaning, but since you broke down the understanding of specific words, it might be helpful to highlight two of get's many definitions as equivalent to reach or arrive:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/get

get verb (REACH)

A1 [ I usually + adv/prep, T ] to reach or arrive at a particular place

get verb (ARRIVE)

[ I always + adv/prep ] to arrive at a place or reach a stage in a process

Example for both in the Cambridge dictionary linked above:

What time does he normally get home?

So get has nothing to do with the travelling, and is purely being used to signify arriving at a place by any means.

In this example the place is "up this way", which other answers have already pointed out is idiomatic for the place the speaker is, presumably more northerly or at higher altitude than the person the comment is directed at.

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  • "Get" meaning move is most commonly found in "get to X": "If you ever get to Yorkshire". But "get up to 10000ft", "get down to the floor", "get on to the bed", "get into the garage" are all fine. It's the use in conjunction with a metaphorical sense of "up" that causes the confusion here.
    – Michael Kay
    Commented Sep 4 at 8:46
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As a lifelong resident of the deep South (and by "deep" I mean, quite literally falling into the Gulf of Mexico) I am well-versed in directional terms that may or may not have anything to do with actual directions.

Others have already mentioned that this is an idiomatic expression. In my experience, "up this way" loosely implies a northerly direction. Its counterparts, "down this way" and "over this way" tend to apply to the south and east/west, respectively. (Note that "over" is being used, not as the opposite of under, but in the way that we say something is "over there.") "Up this way" may also mean "up the road" from the location of the other party, regardless of direction.

But, again, it's a loose implication. While it usually applies in this manner, people don't generally notice if someone uses "up this way" to refer to a southerly location, and so on.

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