The Fall of Autumn? The Autumn of Fall?

Every now and then an idle conversation--even about something mundane or even banal--ends up taking you (me!) down a most remarkable path.

Take yesterday evening, for example ...

Joyce and I were driving over to Aurora to nab something important (a Diet Coke at McD's), when, observing the changing leaves, we wondered if the term fall came from its obvious source--fall of leaves. Seemed so evident that it didn't even need checking.

But check I did. And came up with some surprises.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, I learned, the fall of the leaf was an early 16th-century expression for the season. Fall ensued but was eventually overtaken by autumn, a word that has quite a serpentine history:

Etymology: < (i) Anglo-Norman and Middle French autompne, Middle French automne (French automne) season between summer and winter (1231 in Old French), middle age (1405), and its etymon (ii) classical Latin autumnus (also auctumnus, in post-classical Latin also autumpnus) third season of the year, fruits of this season, harvest, of uncertain origin (perhaps < Etruscan).

One of the OED examples, by the way, is from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which I taught for about a decade back at Harmon Middle School. At one point the bride-hunting Petruchio is bragging about how well he will be able to handle the "shrew," Katherine, whom he's just heard about--and whose daddy, Petruchio has just learned, has Big Bucks (sounded to impecunious Petruchio like a great marriage prospect!):

For I will board her, though she chide as loud

As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack (1.2).

Anyway, the OED entry on fall is lengthy, but I have pasted in the whole damn thing at the end of this post.

So ... a casual question cost me a couple of hours of running around and checking and writing. And the only downside? I will promptly forget all of this by next fall, when I will wonder aloud on a drive over to Aurora for a Diet Coke, "I wonder if fall has to do with the falling leaves?"

And Joyce will look at me and smile and say, "You should look that up."

Which I will, as soon as we get home ...

But let's let Miss Emily have the final word(s):

IF you were coming in the fall,   

I ’d brush the summer by            

With half a smile and half a spurn,         

As housewives do a fly.

Here's a link to the rest of her poem ...

FALL

a. The season between summer and winter; autumn.

Used without article or with the.

A shortening of earlier fall of the leaf: see Phrases 4.

Although common in British English in the 16th century, by the end of the 17th century fall had been overtaken by autumn as the primary term for this season. In early North American use both terms were in use, but fall had become established as the more usual term by the early 19th century. It also long survived in use in other varieties and dialects, especially in fixed phrasal expressions such as fall of the year and (until the early 20th century) in collocation with spring.

1550   J. Hooper Godly Confession sig. D   Euen as man is ordeined to the order, chang, and alteracyon of tyme, as thorder of the yere appointeth, now to be subiect vnto summer, nowe vnto winter, now to the sprynge, and nowe to the falle.

1601   W. Cornwallis Ess. II. xxxv. sig. V4v   Fishers hauing flies for the spring, the fall, and the winter.

1664   J. Evelyn Sylva (1679) 15   His..leaves..becoming yellow at the fall, do commonly clothe it all the winter.

1672   R. Perrot Let. 21 June in Docs. Assembly State of N.Y. (133rd Session, Doc. No. 170) (1910) XXXIV. 671   It will disherten the Rest of the gentelmen from Cuming vp at the falle.

1701   D. Irish Animadversio Astrologica 21   That [medicine] was only to be taken Spring and Fall; this may be taken at all Times and Seasons of the Year.

1752   J. Edwards Wks. (1834) I. p. cxcv/1   I thank you for your letter..which I received this fall.

1767   Quebec Gaz. 5 Jan. 3/1   A few barrels of pickeled cod fish, taken..last Fall.

1826   Scott Malachi Malagrowther i. 10   She has been bled and purged, spring and fall.

1828   J. F. Cooper Notions Amer. I. 117   The Americans commonly call the autumn the ‘fall’; from the falling of the leaf.

1851   T. Carlyle Life J. Sterling i. xi. 100   His first child..was born there..in the fall of that year 1831.

1862   J. R. Lowell Biglow Papers 2nd Ser. i. i. 8   Frosts have been unusually backward this fall.

1900   Irish Times 2 June 5/8   They have had the power, during the past fall and winter, carefully estimated by different engineers.

1907   Standard 21 Feb. 8/1   In the spring and fall there is a good deal of dampness and fog.

1970   Weekend Mag. (Toronto) 14 Feb. 13/2   Fall came, but no caribou.

1987   F. Graham New Geordie Dict. 19   Fall, in the, in the autumn.

2001   Irish Times 18 July 6   I doubt very much with the time available that it [sc. a referendum] can be held in the fall of the year.

2014   Atlantic Apr. 20/1   Our only child will be leaving for college in the fall.