Autumn (also known as Fall in North American English North American English is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in North America, namely in the United States and Canada. Because of the considerable similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and accent between American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages are often grouped together) is one of the four temperate In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally mild, rather than extreme hot or cold. But in continental areas, such as central North America the variations between summer and winter can be extreme. In regions traditionally seasons Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of revolution. In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to go into hibernation or to migrate, and. Autumn marks the transition from summer Summer is one of the four temperate seasons, marked by the warmest time of year with the longest days into winter Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. In many countries, winter officially begins on the day of the year which has fewest hours of daylight, the winter solstice, and ends on the following equinox. In the Northern Hemisphere, depending on the year, this corresponds to the period between December 20 and 21 and March 20 or 21. It, usually in late March (southern hemisphere The Southern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is south of the equator—the word hemisphere (from the greek word σφαιρα +ημι(half)) literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere south of the celestial equator) or late September (northern hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of its land area and most of its human population) when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier.

Meteorological Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting (in contrast with climatology). Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century saw breakthroughs occur after observing Astronomical Astronomy (from the Greek words astron , "star", and nomos (νόμος), "law") is the scientific study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry,
Northern hemisphere 1 September September 1 is the 244th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 121 days remaining until the end of the year – 30 November November 30 is the 334th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 31 days remaining until the end of the year[1] Autumnal equinox An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus and nox (night), (22–23 September) – Winter solstice A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach its northernmost or southernmost extreme. The name is derived from the Latin sol and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun (21–22 December)[citation needed]
Southern hemisphere 10 March March 10 is the 69th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 296 days remaining until the end of the year – 31 May May 31 is the 151st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 214 days remaining until the end of the year 20 March March 20 is the 79th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 286 days remaining until the end of the year – 21 June June 21 is the 172nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 193 days remaining until the end of the year[citation needed]

In theory, astronomically, the equinoxes An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus and nox (night), ought to be the middle of the respective seasons, but temperature lag (caused by the thermal latency of the ground and sea) means that seasons appear later than dates calculated from a purely astronomical perspective. The actual lag varies with region, so some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as "mid-autumn" whilst other treat it as the start of autumn (as shown in the above table).

Autumn starts on or around 15 September September 15 is the 258th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 107 days remaining until the end of the year and ends on about 6 November November 6 is the 310th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 55 days remaining until the end of the year in solar term.

In Ireland Ireland (pronounced /ˈaɪrlənd/ , locally [ˈaɾlənd]; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann, Latin: Hibernia) is the third-largest island in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of, the autumn months according to the national meteorological service, Met Eireann, are September, October and November.[2] However, according to the Irish Calendar The Irish calendar does not observe the typical astronomical seasons , or the meteorological seasons (beginning on March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1), but rather centres the seasons around the solstices and equinoxes (so that, for instance, midsummer falls on the summer solstice), beginning the seasons at the approximate halfway points which is based on ancient Celtic Celts , is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language. The term is also used in a wider sense to describe the modern descendants of those peoples, notably those who participate in a Celtic culture traditions, autumn counts throughout the months of August, September, and October.[3]

In the Southern Hemisphere The Southern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is south of the equator—the word hemisphere (from the greek word σφαιρα +ημι(half)) literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere south of the celestial equator, autumn begins on 21 March March 21 is the 80th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 285 days remaining until the end of the year and ends around 21 June June 21 is the 172nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 193 days remaining until the end of the year.[4]

Contents

Etymology

The word autumn comes from the Old French Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 900 to 1300. It was then known as the langue d'oïl to distinguish it from the langue d'oc (Occitan language, also then called Provençal), whose territory bordered that of word autompne (automne in modern French), and was later normalized to the original Latin Latin is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including word autumnus.[5] There are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but it became common by the 16th century.

Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season. However as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns (especially those who could read and write, the only people whose use of language we now know), the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and fall, as well as autumn, began to replace it as a reference to the season.[6][7]

The alternative word fall is now mostly a North American English North American English is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in North America, namely in the United States and Canada. Because of the considerable similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and accent between American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages are often grouped together word for the season. It traces its origins to old Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a. The exact derivation is unclear, the Old English Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon. It is a West Germanic language and is closely related to Old fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300 fall all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are clearly derived either from a common root or from each other. The term came to denote the season in the 16th century, a contraction of Middle English Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470 expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".[8]

During the 17th century, English immigration to the colonies in North America North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean; South America lies to the was at its peak, and the new settlers took their language with them. While the term fall gradually became obsolescent in Britain, it became the more common term in North America, where autumn is nonetheless preferred in scientific and often in literary contexts.

In popular culture

Harvest association

Personification Categories: Personifications | Rhetorical techniques | Figures of speech | Literary devices playing with meaning | Descriptive technique of Autumn (Currier & Ives Lithograph Lithography is a method for printing using a stone (Lithographic Limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface. Lithography uses oil or fat and gum arabic to divide the smooth surface into hydrophobic regions which accept the ink, and hydrophilic regions which reject it and thus become the background. By contrast, in intaglio, 1871). John Everett Millais Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, "Autumn Leaves".

Association with the transition from warm to cold weather, and its related status as the season of the primary harvest, has dominated its themes and popular images. In Western cultures, personifications of autumn are usually pretty, well-fed females adorned with fruits, vegetables and grains and wheat that ripen at this time. Most ancient cultures featured autumnal celebrations of the harvest, often the most important on their calendars. Still extant echoes of these celebrations are found in the mid-autumn Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. It is a holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday holiday of the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the, and the Jewish A Jew (Hebrew: יְהוּדִי‎, Yehudi ; יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl.); Ladino: ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sg.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish: יִיד, Yid (sg.); יִידן, Yidn (pl.)) is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, Sukkot Sukkot , is a Biblical pilgrimage festival that occurs in autumn on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei (late September to late October). The holiday lasts seven days, including Chol Hamoed. Sukkot is one of the three major holidays known collectively as the Shalosh Regalim (three pilgrim festivals), when the Jews traveled to the Temple in holiday with its roots as a full moon harvest festival of "tabernacles" (huts wherein the harvest was processed and which later gained religious significance). There are also the many North American Indian festivals tied to harvest of autumnally ripe foods gathered in the wild, the Chinese Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, and many others. The predominant mood of these autumnal celebrations is a gladness for the fruits of the earth mixed with a certain melancholy linked to the imminent arrival of harsh weather.

This view is presented in John Keats John Keats was an English poet who became one of the key poets of the English Romantic movement during the early nineteenth century. During his very short life, his work received constant critical attacks from periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen has been immense. Elaborate word' poem To Autumn where he describes the season as a time of bounteous fecundity, a time of 'mellow fruitfulness'.

Melancholy association

Autumn in poetry has often been associated with melancholy Melancholia (from Greek μελαγχολία - melancholia, also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression, characterized by low levels of. The possibilities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, and people turn inward, both physically and mentally.[9] Rainer Maria Rilke Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th-century poets. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and, a German poet, has expressed such sentiments in one of his most famous poems, Herbsttag (Autumn Day), which reads

Who now has no house, will not build one (anymore).
Who now is alone, will remain so for long,
will wake, and read, and write long letters
and back and forth on the boulevards
will restlessly wander, while the leaves blow.

Similar examples may be found in William Butler Yeats William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn' poem The Wild Swans at Coole where the maturing season that the poet observes symbolically represents his own aging self. Like the natural world that he observes he too has reached his prime and now must look forward to the inevitability of old age and death. Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry's "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") is likewise characterized by strong, painful feelings of sorrow. Keats John Keats was an English poet who became one of the key poets of the English Romantic movement during the early nineteenth century. During his very short life, his work received constant critical attacks from periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen has been immense. Elaborate word' To Autumn, written in September 1819, echoes this sense of melancholic reflection, but also emphasises the lush abundance of the season.

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-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Other associations

In North America, autumn is also associated with the Halloween Halloween is a holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day. It is largely a secular celebration, but some Christians and pagans have expressed strong feelings about its religious overtones. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America during season (which in turn was influenced by Samhain Samhain is a festival on the end of the harvest season in Gaelic and Brythonic cultures, with aspects of a festival of the dead. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year, a Celtic autumn festival),[10] and with it a widespread marketing campaign that promotes it. The television, film, book, costume, home decoration, and confectionery industries use this time of year to promote products closely associated with such holiday, with promotions going from early September to 31 October October 31 is the 304th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 61 days remaining until the end of the year, since their themes rapidly lose strength once the holiday ends, and advertising starts concentrating on Christmas.

Since 1997, Autumn has been one of the top 100 names for girls in the United States.[11]

Tourism

An autumn tree in New York A brightly colored tree contrasts the green foliage which surrounds it

Although color change in leaves occurs wherever deciduous trees are found, colored autumn foliage is most famously noted in two regions of the world: most of Canada and the United States; and Eastern Asia, including China, Korea, and Japan.

Eastern Canada and the New England region of the United States are famous for the brilliance of their autumnal foliage[12][13], and this attracts major tourism (worth billions of US$) for the regions.[14][15]

References

  1. ^ NOAA's National Weather Service Glossary.
  2. ^ http://www.met.ie/climate/monthly_summarys/autumn07.pdf
  3. ^ http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Autumn.htm
  4. ^ http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Autumn.htm
  5. ^ Etymology of 'autumn' - New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1997 Edition
  6. ^ Harper, Douglas. "harvest". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=harvest.
  7. ^ Harper, Douglas. "autumn". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=autumn.
  8. ^ Harper, Douglas. "fall". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fall.
  9. ^ Cyclical Regenerative Time - (c) Autumn (from 'Symbolism of Place', symbolism.org website)
  10. ^ Halloween (from the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia)
  11. ^ Popular Baby Names, Social Security Online.
  12. ^ http://www.gov.ns.ca/news/details.asp?id=19990921001
  13. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/the-complete-guide-to-leafpeeping-612904.html
  14. ^ http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/NEWS/710090335
  15. ^ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a3vkUrgIabaA&refer=us

This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain.

External links

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A. Funny, I get up at 4 to go to the gym. I have no trouble falling asleep by 10. Try getting up at 4:30 to go to the gym. And don't watch tv at night. Drink a cup of chamomile tea at 8:30 while reading or listening to NPR - you'll fall asleep on time, no problem.
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