Sothern

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. An archaic spelling of southern, meaning situated in or coming from the south part of a region
2. An old-fashioned form of the word southern, used to describe something located toward the south
3. A obsolete variant of southern that refers to the southward direction or to places lying in the south

Etymology: Sothern is a surname that most people know only from the stage, where it means "southern" in an old-fashioned spelling. The adjective itself is an Old English formation, "sūþerne," built from "sūþ" (south) and the suffix "-erne," which marked a direction, so the sense was simply "situated to the south." It is the same root that gives "south," "southerly" and "southern," and the older form survived in ordinary English speech and writing for centuries, especially in poetry and in the names of regions. The spelling was not dropped everywhere. "Sothern" stayed common in the 1500s and 1600s, and it appears in the King James Bible, where "the south wind" is rendered with this form, so readers of that text met it constantly. Modern dictionaries still list it as a variant of "southern," marked as archaic or dated, and it survives mainly in proper nouns and in quotations from older texts.

Synonyms: southern, southerly, austral

Antonyms: northern, northerly