Tower Dungeon - Vol. 1 Ch. 1 - Yuva, Renowned Thrower of Feed

[sarusa]

Usually when you say "down to," it's for something like "it's down to me and you" or "it's down to me/us." That colloquialism doesn't work too well in the context of page 12. So when I say it's weird, I assume it's a different colloquialism from this one, because this one doesn't work in that context.

Never seen it used as a substitute for "due to" or "because."

I am an American who regularly sees it used this way, but there is a very specific context. It's short for 'If you trace all the way down to the root of the matter, the problem was caused by this', and you see it a lot in reports on Bad Things Happening, though sometimes good!

For instance, 'Why did the new Google Wallet fail so badly in the West?' 'That's down to the Indian exec heading Google Finance not realizing that banking and phone usage models are completely different in India'. Slightly more verbose common variations are 'it all came down to' and 'it was all down to', the 'all' emphasizing that you're assigning the root cause, not just a cause.

It's certainly less common than the other two uses, 'We're down to two contestants ' and 'are you down to party Saturday', but you see it a lot in the context of computers, companies, and governments, where things go quite wrong quite often and you need a short phrase to assign blame. You don't see it so much in fiction, certainly more in Brit stuff.

 

[Toon_Jay]

I am an American who regularly sees it used this way, but there is a very specific context. It's short for 'If you trace all the way down to the root of the matter, the problem was caused by this', and you see it a lot in reports on Bad Things Happening, though sometimes good!

For instance, 'Why did the new Google Wallet fail so badly in the West?' 'That's down to the Indian exec heading Google Finance not realizing that banking and phone usage models are completely different in India'. Slightly more verbose common variations are 'it all came down to' and 'it was all down to', the 'all' emphasizing that you're assigning the root cause, not just a cause.

It's certainly less common than the other two uses, 'We're down to two contestants ' and 'are you down to party Saturday', but you see it a lot in the context of computers, companies, and governments, where things go quite wrong quite often and you need a short phrase to assign blame. You don't see it so much in fiction, certainly more in Brit stuff.

Gotcha, thank you

My guess for the logic behind that phrasing was like... Being used as if saying "by deduction." Seems like that was sorta it xD