The names ‘autumn’ and ‘fall’ are both commonly used. ‘Autumn’ is thought to be slightly older, appearing in the 1300s, while the word ‘fall’ first appeared around the 1500s in reference to leaves falling off trees.
This is the time of colourful foliage, crisp air, the first frost, and pumpkin spice. It’s many people’s favourite season, and it’s the only one with more than one commonly used name.
The word ‘autumn’ comes from the French ‘autompne’, from the Latin ‘autumnus’, whose deeper roots are obscure. It’s first recorded in English as early as the late 1300s – notably, both Chaucer and Shakespeare used it in their works.
Speakers of British English largely use ‘autumn’ or the autumn season.
Nowadays, speakers of American English commonly use both ‘fall’ and ‘autumn’ to refer to the season, though ‘fall’ became more common in the U.S. by the late 1800s.
Recorded use of the word ‘fall’ as the name of the third season of the year comes from as early as the 1500s. The name is thought to originate in the phrase ‘the fall of the leaf’, in reference to the time of year when deciduous trees shed their leaves. The name of its inverse season, ‘spring’, is thought to come from the phrase ‘spring of the leaf’ – the time when everything is blossoming.
The name ‘fall’ was commonly used in England until about the end of the 1600s, when it was ousted by ‘autumn’.
The multiple senses of the word ‘fall’ come in handy for the helpful reminder “Spring Forward, Fall Back”, which serves as a mnemonic about how to set our clocks for daylight-saving time.
In the Northern Hemisphere, ‘fall’ is roughly between August and November, technically lasting from the autumnal equinox (often referred to as the September equinox because it occurs around the end of September) until the winter solstice (around the end of December). In the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are flipped, fall is roughly between the end of March and the end of June.
The earliest known name for the season in English is ‘harvest’. It comes from the Old English word ‘hærfest’, of Germanic origin, perhaps with an underlying, ancient sense of “picking, plucking” (as in, picking fruits to harvest them).
Eventually, the use of ‘harvest’ as a name for the season fell out of use, instead becoming used for the period when ripened crops are harvested – gathered for processing and winter storage. The word ‘harvest’ can also refer collectively to those ripened, gathered crops themselves.
© Times of U