Why does autumn have two names

This was shortened in the s to fall. Around this time, England's empire was fast expanding, which meant that the English language was going places. One place it went was to the New World, and it set up shop in North America in the s. As time went on, the English spoken in America and the English spoken in Britain diverged: there wasn't as much contact between the two groups of English speakers.

Throw into the mix the independence of the United States, and the fact that the type of English spoken in America became part of our early national identity, and the gulf between the two dialects of English widened. A handful of words got caught in the identity crisis, and fall was one of them.

Both autumn and fall were born in Britain, and both emigrated to America. But autumn was, by far, the more popular term for quite a long time. In fact, the "autumn" sense of fall wasn't even entered into a dictionary until , when Samuel Johnson first entered it in his Dictionary of the English Language. By the middle of the s, American English and British English had diverged, and so had fall and autumn.

One early American lexicographer, John Pickering, noted in his entry for fall :. A friend has pointed out to me the following remark on this word: "In North America the season in which this [the fall of the leaf] takes place, derives its name from that circumstance, and instead of autumn is universally called the fall. We aren't sure why fall flourished in the United States—Pickering's friend gives us no further particulars—but by the mids, fall was considered to be entirely American by American lexicographers.

Fall is still occasionally used in countries where British English is spoken, but usually only in a handful of fixed phrases, like spring and fall. The book contains a whole chapter about the insidious nature of Americanisms and how they were ruining Kipling.

However, the brothers did agree that the Americans got one thing right, and it's the use of the word fall instead of autumn. And there's no worse crime than word larceny. While location will likely play a part in where you hear fall or autumn, it's ultimately up to you to decide which one best captures the spirit of this particular season.

Please, though, whatever you do, just don't start calling it pumpkin spice season. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

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Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. By Noel Kirkpatrick Noel Kirkpatrick. Noel Kirkpatrick is an editor and writer based in Tacoma, Washington. He covers many topics including science and the environment. Learn about our editorial process. According to Dictionary. The two terms are actually first recorded within a few hundred years of each other. The word is of Germanic stock and meant "picking," "plucking," or " reaping ," a nod to the act of gathering and preserving crops before winter.

In the s, English speakers began referring to the seasons separating the cold and warm months as either the fall of the leaf or spring of the leaf , or fall and spring for short. Both terms were simple and evocative, but for some reason, only spring had staying power in Britain.