South-Southeast, a Secondary Point of the Compass Rose

South-southeast is a bearing of 157.5 degrees, midway between south and southeast. The naming convention for the sixteen- and thirty-two-point rose is systematic: the four cardinals, then the four intercardinals named by combining them, then the eight secondary intercardinals named by prefixing the nearer cardinal, and finally, in the thirty-two-point rose, sixteen further points named by the formula north by east, northeast by north and so on. The order is fixed and the names are not interchangeable, so south-southeast and southeast by south are different bearings eleven and a quarter degrees apart. The system is entirely a navigational and surveying convention. Cosmological schemes that use more than eight directions, such as the Chinese twenty-four mountains or the ten directions of Buddhist cosmology, divide the circle differently and do not map onto it.

South-southeast is one of the thirty-two points of the traditional mariner's compass rose, bisecting south and southeast at 157.5 degrees. Each of the thirty-two points carries a formal compound name built by a fixed grammar, a cardinal-intercardinal point such as south-southeast names the half-way bearing between its two named neighbours by combining them in a set order, cardinal direction first, and the whole naming system was standardised for English-language navigation by the eighteenth century as the reference against which magnetic compass headings, and later the fully numerical 360-degree bearing system now standard in aviation and modern navigation, were taught and cross-checked by mariners memorising the full thirty-two-point rose.