The Fall of Autumn and the Rise of Fall

The relatively recent subtleties of this liminal season are quite interesting.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the Anglo-Saxons marked the passage of time with just one season: winter, a concept considered equivalent to hardship or adversity that metaphorically represented the year in its entirety.

Eventually, speakers of Middle English (the language used from the 11th to 15th centuries) conceived of the year in terms of halves: "sumer," the warm half, and "winter," the cold half. This two-season frame of reference dominated Western thinking as late as the 18th century.

“Autumn,” a Latin word, first appears in English in the late 14th century, and gradually gained on "harvest." In the 17th century, "fall" came into use, almost certainly as a poetic complement to "spring," and it competed with the other terms.

Natalie Wolchover | LiveScience.com

image:  Japanese Maple, MaleneThyssen