Jo here. Welcome to autumn.
Where does the word come from? I'll just quote wikipedia.
"The word autumn comes from the ancient Etruscan root autu- and has within it connotations of the passing of the year. It was borrowed by the neighbouring Romans, and became the Latin word autumnus. After the Roman era the word continued to be used as the Old French word autompne (automne in modern French), and was later normalised to the original Latin. In the Medieval period there are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century it was in common use."
What did they call it in English before the 16th century? Apparently, harvest, which makes sense. Especially when I think of my bountiful crop of tomatoes at the moment! If I were in France I might be harvesting grapes, and I'd certainly welcome a bumper crop of them. We used to have a vine in Canada and we did make wine. Tomato wine? We tried it once. (We've experimented with nearly all fruits.) Nah.
Of course North Americans call it fall, which again makes sense in all the places where the leaves begin to fall and make thick carpets. There have to be places where this happens in England, but as house plots don't tend to be large or have many large trees, I think it's less common. Let's just say I don't remember raking leaves when growing up.
For my first medieval, Lord of My Heart, (A RITA finalist) I pointed out that the colour scheme just wasn't very likely!
John Keats famously wrote of the English autumn.
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;"
I've been thinking about autumn recently as my work-in-progress begins in late September and my heroine, being cold and wet, is not feeling kindly about the season.
Autumn can be a lovely month, and here in Devon we're having a particularly warm and sunny one, for which I give thanks, but for me there's a sorrow to it, mainly from it also bringing the equinox. From now on we'll have less daylight than dark. I sense winter prowling towards me, smelling of dark and cold. Yup, if you haven't guessed, I could cut winter out of the year and think nothing lost. Well, to be precise, I'd cut from mid November to mid-February. Don't worry,I'd stretch out the other bits and we'd still have Christmas.
I find North American writers are more likely to celebrate autumn, and it's not surprising if they live in the areas that give the splendid fall colours. A hillside in vivid red and gold is a staggering beauty, and the simplest street can be made magical by a carpet of the leaves of one or two trees.
"The time of the falling leaves has come again. Once more in our morning walk we tread upon carpets of gold and crimson, of brown and bronze, woven by the winds or the rains out of these delicate textures while we slept. How beautifully the leaves grow old! How full of light and color are their last days!" John Burroughs.
Jane Austen is more somber. “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges...” Persuasion
Where are you on the seasons? I suspect it will depend a lot on where you live, but do you like to have all four, or is there one you'd cheerfully eliminate?
Jo