sørlig

Sørlig is a Norwegian adjective meaning southern or oriented toward the south. It is used to describe direction, location, or climate in geographic, meteorological, and nautical contexts. In everyday and formal writing it can appear in phrases such as "sørlig vind" (southerly wind) or "sørlige breddegrader" (southern latitudes).

Etymology and related forms: The word is formed from the noun "sør" meaning south, with the suffix "-lig" indicating a characteristic. This construction is parallel to related adjectives in other Scandinavian languages, such as Danish sørlig. In Norwegian, it functions as an adjective and adapts to gender and number in standard ways.

Usage notes: Sørlig describes orientation toward the south rather than a specific southern region. It is commonly used alongside other cardinal-direction adjectives, such as nordlig (northern), østlig (eastern), and vestlig (western), in geography, climatology, and navigation. The term tends to appear in more formal or technical prose, but you may encounter it in descriptive travel writing as well.

Common examples include describing wind direction, climate zones, or the southern parts of a country. There are no widely recognized places or organizations named "Sørlig," and the word is primarily a descriptive, not a proper noun, term. In translation, sørlig is typically rendered as "southern" or "southerly" in English, depending on the grammatical context.