in early ME., the hour of the day = OE.ġ3b. A point in the course of time or of a period: = tide sb. The OED’s sense 13 for time not only equates it to tide but even goes so far as to offer up the otherwise-absent autumn-time as one example:ġ3a. This is the sense of tide that is equivalent to time, as in eventide or yuletide. 485 ― The changing year came round to autumn-tide.

Here’s one OED citation for it:ġ870 Morris Earthly Par. Well, there is the word autumn-tide, but it doesn’t get used much. This answer is not meant to detract from Peter Shor’s, which I believe is both correct and insightful is its explanation of why autumntime occurs so rarely compared with the other three modern seasons.

Variations in punctuation, spacing, and capitalization do not matter.

It is quite rare in comparison with the other seasons’ versions.Unlike most dictionaries, the OED does include autumn-time.The premise that autumntime “is not a word” is faulty: it is a word.However, the song 'Sumer Is Icumen In', which Wikipedia says was composed in the 13th century, is clearly about spring. Maybe people used 'spring time' and 'harvest time' more often earlier because 'spring' and 'harvest' weren't yet established words for seasons (as 'summer' and 'winter' were).ġ This probably didn't happen at a single point in time. The word 'autumn' was borrowed from Old French in the 16th century, well after 'springtime', 'summertime', 'harvesttime', and 'wintertime' were established, and for some reason these phrases were not extended to 'autumntime', even though it would have been a very logical development in English. This explains why we don't say 'fall time'. It also appears that the 'long forms' of the names for the seasons were 'spring time', 'harvest time', and 'fall of the leaf'. It seems from these quotes that we might easily have had lent (a shortened form of lengthen) and harvest as names for spring and autumn, as these were common names for these seasons in Middle English. We can see from the OED that their names fluctuated for a while before settling into spring and fall or autumn.Ĭ1050: Þa feower timan.lengten, sumor, hærfest, & winter.Ī1387: Þe evenes of þe day and þe nyȝt is ones in þe Lente and efte in hervest.ġ545: Spring tyme, Somer, faule of the leafe, and winter. However, the other two seasons didn't have definite names. They had words for other periods of the year, but they weren't considered seasons.Īt some point near the beginning of Middle English 1, a four-season calendar was adopted. Most instances of fall in British publications are in reference to American things-television seasons, New York City tourism, and so on-but it’s clear the term is at least familiar to British readers.The Anglo-Saxon calendar only had two seasons, winter and summer, each six months long. Soon enough, like the autumn leaves themselves, the full-blown fall season of shiny new shows will be upon us. Sure, there are fall-colored M&Ms, but autumn candy otherwise looks unappealing. They offer a stylish alternative to the typical fall coat, providing just the right amount of warmth for a 63-degree autumn day in L.A. We even found a few examples of both words used in the same sentence:

ExamplesĪmerican writers are indiscriminate, using both fall and autumn, usually depending on which sounds better. And although we found quite a few instances of fall in Australian publications, Australian writers seem to favor autumn by a significant margin. This has changed, however, as fall has been gaining ground in British publications for some time.Ĭanadians are just as likely as Americans to use fall. After that, while fall became the preferred term in the U.S., autumn became so prevalent in British English that fall as a term for the season was eventually considered archaic. So while the term is now widely used in the U.S., it is not exclusively American, nor is it American in origin.Īutumn came to English from the French automne in the 15th or 16th century, but it didn’t gain prominence until the 18th century. It was originally short for fall of the year or fall of the leaf, but it commonly took the one-word form by the 17th century, long before the development of American English. Fall is in fact an old term for the season, originating in English in the 16th century or earlier. Some who consider British English the only true English regard fall as an American barbarism, but this attitude is not well founded. Fall and autumn are both accepted and widely used terms for the season that comes between summer and winter.

Autumn vs fall uk