I’m a non-native speaker of English, and I’ve always felt that “upshot” was used to denote positive results. But I’ve come across a few cases recently where negative or neutral outcomes were enumerated after the use of “upshot”. For example, “The upshot was that everyone got an incurable disease.”
Is “upshot” intended for positive outcomes only? Or mostly? If yes, what word is used for negative outcomes?
Best Answer
Although the "up" in the word may lead you to infer a positive connotation, technically "upshot" denotes an outcome with neither a positive nor negative connotation.
So it is equally valid to use the word for negative, positive and neutral outcomes.
"Upshot" is not to be confused with "upside," which is exclusively positive.
Such confusion does happen from time to time. Here's one example, where someone wrote a comment using the word upshot instead of upside, to contrast with the later usage of downside:
Its main upshot is..., while the main downside is... is incorrect, since the writer is initially talking about an advantage, not a conclusion or end result.
Reference: Original post can be found here.