Skip to content
OneKitly

southwest

nounadjectiveadverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//sawθˈwɛst//
  • //saʊθˈwɛst//
  • //saʊˈwɛst//

The intercardinal compass point halfway between south and west; specifically at a bearing of 225°.

noun

  1. 1

    The intercardinal compass point halfway between south and west; specifically at a bearing of 225°.

    So this was my future home, I thought![…]Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

    After a while we returned aboard Belvedere, set a course for the southwest, and sailed once more in frustration back to Tuk.

Etymology

From Middle English southwest, southewest, from Old English sūþwest and sūþanwestan, equivalent to south + west. Cognate with West Frisian súdwest, Dutch zuidwest, German Südwesten, Danish sydvest, Swedish sydväst.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of, in or pertaining to the southwest; southwestern.

  2. 2

    Situated toward or in the direction of the southwest; southwestward; southwesterly.

    A southwest course.

  3. 3

    Coming from the southwest; southwesterly.

    A southwest wind.

adverb

  1. 1

    Towards or in the direction of the southwest; southwestwards.

    We are travelling southwest at the moment.

Forms

plural
southwests
comparative
more southwest, further southwest, farther southwest
superlative
most southwest, furthest southwest, farthest southwest
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).