English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
There is one state that is in the South, but not of it.
I have met this sentence in a book explaining about prepositions.
Despite the explaining, I cannot catch up how the meaning is different between In the South and Of the South.
In my supposition, the state in the context does not belong to the South completely, because the state is not of it.
in the South
This would refer to actual geographic location
of the South
This would likely refer to association/origination. Thus, the full sentence means the state is southern by location, but culturally or socially it doesn't appear to be southern.
It means Florida may be in the south in terms of geography (for instance, where it is found on a map) but it's not part of the traditional South as a cultural region.
