Why Americans Refer to Autumn as “Fall”
In Great Britain, the third season of the year is known exclusively as autumn. However, across the Atlantic, Americans use both fall and autumn interchangeably, making it the only season in the English language with two widely accepted names. But why does this season have such a linguistic duality?
According to Dictionary.com, fall isn’t a modern nickname that replaced autumn—the terms actually emerged around the same historical period. To understand their origins, we need to look even further back.
Before either word entered common usage, the season between summer and winter was called harvest (from the Old English hærfest), a Germanic term meaning “picking” or “reaping.” This reflected the critical act of gathering crops before winter.
By the 1500s, English speakers began using poetic phrases like “fall of the leaf” and “spring of the leaf” to describe the transitions between warm and cold months. These were eventually shortened to fall and spring. While spring endured in Britain, fall gradually faded from use there.
In the 1600s, the French-derived term autumn (from autompne, rooted in Latin autumnus) became standard in Britain. Meanwhile, early British colonists carried both fall and autumn to North America. Over time, autumn fell out of favor in Britain, but fall persisted in the American lexicon, cementing itself by the time of U.S. independence.
Today, the coexistence of fall and autumn in American English reflects a fascinating linguistic split. While Britain streamlined to autumn, the U.S. retained fall—a relic of 16th-century English that evolved into a uniquely American quirk.
