The four compass directions are: north, south, east, west. Can the English language make combinations of these? Something like south-west or east-north-east to have more options for directions to indicate. And how should these be spelled out – with dashes or space-separated or simply merged?
In my native Danish language we have several versions, all compactly merged with no spacing in-between, for example:
Sydvest = South-west (equally much south and west)
Østnordøst = East-north-east (both east and north, but more east than north)
Best Answer
We learned the names of the 32 wind directions in the Boy Scouts, but in practice, it is extremely rare ever to see more than the basic eight— north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, northwest — and most people will not know the others unless they have a maritime background. Precise directions are nowadays more usually indicated by numerical degree values.
In older materials you will sometimes see the intermediate directions hyphenated (e.g. south-east), but this is uncommon nowadays.
Going clockwise from North, the points are