Saturday , September 23 , 2023 , mark the start of a new time of year — but what exactly you should call that season depends on where in the world you are and whom you require . In Great Britain , the third season of the year usually has only one name : fall . But if you hop-skip across the Atlantic , you ’ll find that people habituate bothfallandautumninterchangeably when touch to this time of year , making it the only season in the Englishlanguagewith two widely accept names . So what is it about the season of Halloweenpop - up store , denim crownwork , and pumpkin spiciness lattes that make believe it so special ?
According toDictionary.com , fallisn’t a modern nickname that survey the more traditionalautumn . The two terms are actually first recorded within a few hundred long time of each other .
Before either word egress in the lexicon , the time of year between summer and winter was known asharvest , orhærfestin Old English . Thewordis of Germanic fund and imply “ picking , ” “ plucking , ” or “ harvest , ” a nod to the deed of gathering and keep crop before winter .
In the 1500s , English speakers commence calling the seasons sort out the stale and warm months “ fall of the folio ” or “ spring of the leaf , ” or “ fall ” and “ spring ” for short . Both terms were simple and redolent , but for some reason , onlyspringhad stay power in Britain . By the end of the 1600s , fall , from the French wordautompneand the Latinautumnus , had overtakenfallas the stock British term for the third time of year .
Around the same metre England adoptedautumn , the first - ever British American colonist were voyage to North America . With them they make for the wordsfallandautumn , and while the former fell out of fashion abroad , it solidified itself in the local vernacular by the time America win its independency . Today , using both words to describe the season before winter is still a unambiguously American behavior .
Fallandautumnhave the most complicated etymology , but there ’s a news report behind all the word of honor we utilise report the four seasons . Here’show each seasongot its name .
This story originally run in 2019 ; it has been updated for 2023 .
