autumn
/ˈɔːtəm
/noun
1chiefly British The season after summer and before winter, in the northern hemisphere from September to November and in the southern hemisphere from March to May: the countryside is ablaze with colour in autumn figurative he was in the autumn of his life...
- All trials were conducted in the autumn of 1996, and summers and autumns of 1997 and 1998, during the dry season characteristic of the region.
- Come autumn, the leaf colour warms up, becoming singed with red, a real treat to witness.
- He said it was given to her in the autumn of 1997, with a copy kept for the company's files.
1.1 Astronomy The period from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice.At the autumnal equinox, the sun appears to cross the celestial equator, from north to south; this marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere....
- The autumnal equinox is the day when Autumn begins and night and day are nearly the same length.
- The Autumn Equinox marks the arrival of autumn, which will sneaking up to us this Thursday!
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French autompne, or later directly from Latin autumnus.
We now call the season between summer and winter autumn, a word borrowed in the 14th century via Old French from Latin autumnus. harvest, an older word, was the usual name for the season until autumn displaced it in the 16th century. Americans call it fall, originally a British expression first recorded in 1545 for the season when leaves fall from the trees, which travelled over to the New World with the first colonists.