south
Definitions
General English
- adjective relating to the south
- noun the direction facing towards the sun at midday
General Science
- adjective situated in the south
Aviation
- adjective referring to areas or regions lying in the south, referring to the compass point 180° from north
- adverb towards the south
- noun a compass point on the mariner’s compass 180° clockwise from due north and directly opposite north
Military
- noun one of the four main points of the compass, corresponding to a bearing of 180 degrees or 3200 mils
- noun an area to the south of your location
Politics
- noun (written as South)a region of a country, e.g. the part of the USA to the south of Washington
Origin & History of “south”
South, together with its relatives German süd, Dutch zuid, Swedish söder, and Danish syd, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *suntha-. this may have been derived from the base of *sunnōn ‘sun’ – in which case south would mean etymologically ‘region of the sun, side on which the sun appears’. French sud ‘south’ was borrowed from English.
