south

I hadn't heard it used in that sense either, c_b, until I read the most recent postings here. Then it seemed to suddenly pop up in several articles I read immediately after. Maybe it was because it had been "flagged" in my mind. :-)

I appreciate you all taking the time to cite usages. :) (Bilby, thanks for the URL especially.) I honestly don't think I've ever heard the word used this way in the United States. When Americans say "South" (with a capital S), even if we're using it as a pejorative, we're usually talking about the U.S. South (i.e. the former Confederacy). Maybe I missed something, but that's a new-to-me usage. Thanks again to my fellow wordie-denizens for teaching me something new.

I think I first heard "South" used in the sense of the poorer countries of the world sometime in the late 80s, when the Cold War was fading and "East–West" issues were becoming less important than "North–South" issues. Perhaps as the "Second World" of industrialized ideologically based command economies disappeared, it made less sense to talk about the "Third World" of non-industrialized, largely authoritarian clan- or family-based economies.

South of the world, as a synonym for underdeveloped countries, was a common usage at least in Italy when I was in primary school (I was born in 1980). I can't remember if I ever heard it afterwards.

c_b, I don't know where South with that meaning came from, although it's fairly obvious that it refers to developing countries being largely in the southern hemisphere compared to industrialised countries being mostly in the north. There used to be a magazine about international development titled South though I'm not sure it's still around. The South Centre certainly is:
"The South Centre (the Centre) is an intergovernmental organization of developing countries established by an Intergovernmental Agreement (Treaty) which came into force on 31 July 1995 with its headquarters in Geneva.
The South Centre has grown out of the work and experience of the South Commission and its follow-up mechanism, and from recognition of the need for enhanced South-South co-operation. The Report of the South Commission -- emphasized that the South is not well organized at the global level and has thus not been effective in mobilizing its considerable combined expertise and experience, nor its bargaining power.
The South Centre is therefore intended to meet the need for analysis of development problems and experience, as well as to provide intellectual and policy support required by developing countries for collective and individual action, particularly in the international arena."
- www.southcentre.org

"Hit Songs of the 1970s and '80s If the South Had Won the Civil War."

Bilby, when examining the Wordnet page for South, we determine that the U.S. sense of South, that being the southern part of the country, has the highest frequency count. This is due to the frequency found in tagged texts, which simply means that word came up the most often.

The two you dislike, which don't occur in the WordNet entry linked above, make some sense, "a demarcated area of the Earth" is for when "south" is used to refer to the Southern Hemisphere. Similarly, "a point or extent in space" makes sense geometrically, we can talk about the southern part of a shape in several dimensions. Without more information from WordNet, I can't narrow it down further.

Finally, WordNet is not a dictionary, it is a "lexical database".

Bizarre! I never heard that usage. Where have you seen/heard it?

I also note that WeirdNet didn't include a usage of South I have heard a few times, that is as a term of reference to the underdeveloped world.

I would venture the guess that this particular dictionary was created by and perhaps mostly for Americans, and the usage in which they most often encounter the word in reading, etc. (especially when it's capitalized) is the region rather than the cardinal direction. Just sayin'.

"a demarcated area of the Earth" and "a point or extent in space" do my head in. That's even before "the spatial relation between something and the course along which it points or moves". Or the USA-centric 'main' definition ... should dictionaries have to ape cultural myopia, real or perceived?

As you say there are these ones: "situated in or oriented toward the southeast" ... 6 of them!

I don't know, most of the WordNet defs tend to make a lot of sense. The southeast and southwest ones are kind of confusing, but the rest seem valid.

One of the most ridiculous collections of WeirdNet defs I have yet seen.

From Hardy's Plena Timoris:

'The moon in its southing directly blent
Its silver with their environment.'