southern

From Middle English southerne, sothern, sutherne, from Old English sūþerne (“southern, southerly, coming from the south; of southern make”), from Proto-Germanic *sunþrōnijaz (“southern”), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂un-, *sh₂wen-, r/n-stem alternation of *sóh₂wl̥ (“sun”). Cognate with Scots southron, sudron (“southern”), Old Frisian sūthern, sūdern (“southern”), Middle Low German sūdern (“southern”), Middle High German sundern (“southern”), Icelandic suðrænn (“southern, tropical”).

Morphologically south +‎ -ern.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsʌðən/
• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈsʌðɚn/, enPR: sŭth′ərn
• (rare, parts of Ontario and Canadian Prairies) IPA^(key): /ˈsaʊðɚn/, enPR: south′ərn

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southern (comparative more southern, superlative most southern)

1. Of, facing, situated in, or related to the south.
2. Of or pertaining to a southern region, especially Southern Europe or the southern United States. quotations ▼

   The southern climate.

   • 2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52:

     From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. […]   But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip.

3. Of a wind: blowing from the south; southerly.

• southerly
• austral
• meridional

• northern
• boreal
• septentrional

southern (plural southerns)

1. Synonym of southerner quotations ▼
   • 1839, Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries:

     Force prevails most with the northerns, reason with the inhabitants of a temperate or middle climate, superstition with the southerns; thus astrology, magic, and all mysterious sciences have come from the Chaldeans and Egyptians.

   • 2011, Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, →ISBN:

     The peace which the French leaguers made soon after with Louis XL, for money and offices, did not satisfy the southerns, whose views in this patriotic war had been wholly different.

   • 2011, Adolphe Thiers, Frederick Shoberl, The History of the French Revolution, →ISBN, page 34:

     This last formed a strong contrast, by its simplicity and its austere bearing, with the old army of Italy, enriched in the beautiful plains which it had conquered, and composed of brave, fiery, and intemperate Southerns.

   • 2012, Ian Duncan, Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg, →ISBN, page 73:

     Then in 1835 it (negatively) remarked 'a national tone and feeling [. . .] with which we southerns do not wholly sympathize'.

• eastern
• western
• oriental
• occidental

• Neuroths, turnshoe