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I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal. No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?
As other commenters have stated, I would commonly use up and down to refer to north and south.
I can guess that "out" meaning west is because in early American times, going west was dangerous. You were going "out" of safety and into the wild. Going "over" just meant going horizontally on the map but within an established (safe) area.
Up and down are kind of obvious, given their relationship to a map. We go "up north" or "down south".
Also, and I imagine this has been brought across HN before - y'all can be singular or plural. Or rather, it can be "about singular", meaning we may not be sure if we're talking about one or a few. But if we want to be clear that we're talking about more than a few, we say "all y'all". Make no mistake, it means every one of you.
Every region has its interesting local language quirks. I guess few regions are full of people as proud as Texans, so we don't often hear about the quirks of Iowans.
I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal. No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?
Not really. Maybe for the author. Living a long time in rural Texas (now urban), I can say that someone might have a propensity to use over and out for specific directions, but in my experience they are interchangeable and it's not a universal truth. Granted there are no universal truths about Texas/Texans so when you hear one, discount it. And you are right that up and down as cardinal directions doesn't feel uniquely Texan but can't tell when only on the inside.
In the seemingly endless rush to satisfy Texan exceptionalism, dialect and slang are among the traits that are always held up as unique. Yet every region has their own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common. Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
On Prince Edward Island (PEI) phrases like 'Up West' and 'Down East' are the norm which seems pretty weird at first. But once you look at the orientation of the island on a map [1] it starts to make some sense. Basically people think of the island as being laid out East to West but in reality the island is rotated ~45 degrees on the actual map. So West is really North-West and East is South-East. This leads to people…
I haven't read the article yet but I'm fixin' to.
As someone who grew up on the coast of California, I've used "out" and "back" to refer to east and west respectively, but I don't think would be a generalizable rule. For people who grew up on an east-facing coast, perhaps it would be reversed? As other commenters have stated, I would commonly use up and down to refer to north and south.
I have a friend who always says "down" no matter where she is going. Dallas and San Antonio and Houston are equally "down" from Austin. Drives me nuts.