My mistake, well spotted! I checked this out and discovered that the Anglo-Saxon word for the season was Hærfest, from which of course we get the word harvest. I believe the German for Autumn is Herbst, an obvious cognate.Galton321 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 10:36 pmI believe both fall and autumn are both old English terms, although from Latin,autumn pre-dates fall. Interestingly in the US they held on to our old English expression Fall as they have with many old ways of expressing English. It not that our American cousins are getting it wrong more like they are continuing to get it right. I believe on some islands off the Virginia and Carolina coast they still speak Elizabethan English.Amor Vincit Omnia wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 9:05 pm Fall is more English than autumn, which of course came to us from Latin via French.
Didn’t Shakespeare use the term himself?
Autumn came into use during the Middle English period, and Fall began to be used by poets originally around the time of Shakespeare.