Talk:south

RFV

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rfv-sense: noun:

• (figuratively) The down or negative direction.

  His luck turned south.

  The water numbed everything south of my ribcage.

The examples look like adverbial and adjectival usage respectively. I am not sure that figurative senses are used in the noun form, though it would not be a surprise.

I have added adverb senses covering "down" and "adverse". I am not sure that the "negative" sense is used adjectivally. DCDuring TALK 13:11, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

RFV-failed / POS changed. - -sche (discuss) 00:59, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Yolngu

Yolngu is often considered a language family, rather than a single language, but it is listed in the translation table. Liliana and I will figure out what to do about that at some point. - -sche (discuss) 18:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

RFV discussion: October–November 2021

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Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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south

Rfv-sense: "The side of a church on the right hand of a person facing the altar."
Added by a veteran editor in 2019, so it's not the thing where (early in Wiktionary history) people used to add "multiple ways of conveying what this means" as different senses. But I don't see a sense like this in other dictionaries, and when I search for e.g. google books:"in the church's south", the hits seem to be using the cardinal direction sense, so if it's real it'd be helpful to have examples that show how this is used distinctly from sense 1. - -sche (discuss) 19:12, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

(Oh, it's in Merriam-Webster, I see. Still, no idea how it'd be used in a way that wouldn't just come across as the cardinal direction...) - -sche (discuss) 19:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Conventionally the altar is at the end of the church towards the Holy Land, which is more or less to the East from the Christian world. So the right side usually is the south. You would need a misaligned church to prove the sense is distinct. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:46, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't a church east of the Holy Land (say in Austrialia or Korea or the Philippines) have south in this sense on its geographic north? And one on the meridians of the Holy Lands have it on the geographic west (if north, eg, Russia) or east (if south of the Holy Land (Ethiopia))? How are Christian churches oriented in these places? Is south used the same way? I'd be surprised. If it isn't, then we are back with -sche's evidence that it is not a distinct sense. DCDuring (talk) 21:10, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The lead for w:St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne says it's "built on a traditional east–west axis, with the altar at the eastern end", though a map shows that it's oriented like an X so a person facing the altar is looking northeast, and their right hand points southeast. w:St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney has the altar on the north, so a person facing it would find the east on their right. So which side is the south of that church?

I now see Century has this sense, with a pointer to east. (They also have senses for e.g. "the region, tract, country, or locality lying opposite to the north", which makes me realize we're missing a noun sense, which I've added.) In the entry on east, Century says "the custom of building churches with the altar and sanctuary at the east end and the main entrance at the west end, [led to] using the terms in this way even with respect to churches not so built". AFAICT the OED doesn't have it. - -sche (discuss) 01:20, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

The long axis of St. Patrick's is ESE, the direction of all numbered streets in Manhattan from 14th Street up. So the south is more or less on the geographic south and the cathedral is aimed at the Holy Land. It might be aimed hundreds of miles south of Jerusalem. DCDuring (talk) 01:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

The cathedral is more nearly aimed at Mecca than Jerusalem. DCDuring (talk) 01:51, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Aha: in their entries on the adjectives, Century says that the "south side of an altar" would be this (viewer's right-hand) side even if not on the south, and likewise "the east end of the choir stalls" would be the one beyond the altar even if not in the east. These would be adjectives, not nouns, as I was looking for, but if there are examples, changing the POS is easy. - -sche (discuss) 01:57, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Great. The directional headings are based on a Mercator projection. The shortest-distance heading is more ENE for both Jerusalem and Mecca. DCDuring (talk) 02:07, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Traditionally, directions mattered a lot more in Catholic liturgies than they typically do now, and had symbolic meanings. The most common direction used non-literally is east, because churches were typically oriented (in the literal sense), but where this did not happen, the concept of a "liturgical east" developed. This can be any direction, but simply refers to the direction a priest faces when celebrating ad orientem (the same direction as the congregation). Likewise, there was a liturgical south and north, which had their own symbolic meanings and determined which way the priest faced when performing certain liturgical actions. The gospel, for instance, was read facing "north", regardless of whether or not it was actually north. There's a Wikipedia article on this concept: Liturgical east and west. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:10, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

This is helpful. Having a better idea of how these senses are used makes me optimistic that it'll be possible to find citations (and also determine which parts of speech this is used in); I'll try to help with this. Contra the usex in east, the various faces of St Mary's in Sydney (discussed above) seem to be named according to their actual direction and not the liturgical direction, but Wikipedia says "at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle, liturgical east is nearly due west", so perhaps that's a church to search for examples in connection with. - -sche (discuss) 06:37, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Andrew has cited this and I've cited the other cardinal directions east, west, and north as both nouns and adjectives (except not north as a noun yet). Fantastic. Some of the citations make clear that the liturgical directions are at 45, 90, or 180 degrees to the geographic directions in the particular churches they're discussing. Someone particularly enterprising could probably cite some other directions like northeast (one cite is at Citations:east). Side issue: we have "_bound traffic" senses at north and south but not east or west, if anyone wants to add them. - -sche (discuss) 19:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Another side issue: we only had ad orientem as Nynorsk. I added an English section, but perhaps both sections should just be combined into a Latin section. - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 19:51, 1 November 2021 (UTC)