phrase-meaningword-usage
I haven't succeed with a research of the phrase below cited from the House M.D. – Love Hurts, episode 7×06.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy:
The two of you have a combined IQ north of 300.
What does north of xxx means in case of using with a number, not direction?
Where is likely the usage of this phrase and in what situations?
Do exist another phrases using others of he world sides (sout, west, east) in a similar context?
The word ‘due’ in this context would means a person or thing was traveling in the direction indicated. So a person traveling to the north from the south is heading due north, and a wind blowing due north is blowing from south to north.
Normally, winds are named for the direction they come from. So a north wind is blowing from north to south, and is expected to be cold. An east wind blows from east to west, and a south wind from the south.
While the language usage is saying the wind is blowing south to north, the more common English language convention is that a wind is described with the direction it is coming from. If you have access to the question writer, I’d ask them which they meant, because it is easy for a native speaker to mix this up. Otherwise, assume that ‘due north’ means the wind is coming from the south.
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
Best Answer
On a standard map, north is on top, south on the bottom (and east / west right and left respectively).
This image is the base for using north / south figuratively:
So you can rephrase your example as
(East and west are rarely used in a similarly figurative sense.)