Americans say fall because the British once did, before they stopped
Fall is not an Americanism. It was ordinary English in sixteenth-century England, shortened from phrases like fall of the leaf. Settlers carried it across the Atlantic in the 1600s, where it thrived, while back home it faded and autumn, a borrowed Latin word, took over. Before either, English speakers simply called the season harvest.
Harvest was the usual name until the sixteenth century, as its cousins still are in Dutch herfst and German Herbst. As people left the fields for towns, the word narrowed to mean only the act of reaping, leaving a gap. Autumn filled it, from Latin autumnus, possibly rooted in an Etruscan word linked to the passing year; it came through Old French and was later respelled to match the Latin. Northern England once used another name, backend, now largely gone.
When the season begins depends on who is counting. Meteorologists use whole months, September to November in the north and March to May in the south. Many high-latitude countries run it from the September equinox to the winter solstice, while the traditional East Asian solar terms start it around 8 August. The Irish calendar, drawing on Gaelic custom, covers August to October, which is why the Irish name for September means middle of autumn. The Roman scholar Varro set it from 11 August to 9 November.
Harvest festivals mark it almost everywhere, from Thanksgiving in Canada and the United States to the Jewish Sukkot and the Chinese Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. Their mood tends to mix gratitude for the crops with unease at the hard months coming. Halloween descends partly from Samhain, a Celtic feast that honoured both the harvest and death as livestock was slaughtered ahead of winter.
Poets lean into the same double feeling. John Keats, writing To Autumn in September 1819, celebrated mellow fruitfulness, while W. B. Yeats saw his own ageing in a maturing season. In Indian tradition autumn belongs to Saraswati, goddess of learning, and Asian mysticism links it with metal and the colour white.
Source: Autumn
