This may be nothing more than a seasonal thread running through poetry. In tracking down literary citations for documentation of actual usage, I noticed that an unusually high proportion seemed to be in verse. In this particular case, we have a fairly uncommon word that nonetheless has a clear meaning that any native speaker would immediately recognize upon first seeing or hearing it. On the other hand, just because a dictionary does happen to list a word does not necessarily mean that it is a common word that most native speakers will know what means. You should therefore never conclude that the omission of a dictionary entry for a word somehow “means” that that word is not an “actual” word. There are many reasons why dictionaries leave words out. Just because a dictionary doesn’t list a word does not mean that that word is “not a word”: absence of evidence never constitutes evidence of absence. However, the OED includes no actual citations for autumn-time.Īs I recently mentioned elsewhere, it is important to remember that no dictionary purports to include all words, not even the OED. Summer-time, autumn-time, winter-time also term-time, vacation-time, holiday-time, etc. A point or fixed part of the year, a season, as in time of year in comb. in early ME., the hour of the day = OE.ġ3b. A point in the course of time or of a period: = tide sb. The OED’s sense 13 for time not only equates it to tide but even goes so far as to offer up the otherwise-absent autumn-time as one example:ġ3a. This is the sense of tide that is equivalent to time, as in eventide or yuletide. 485 ― The changing year came round to autumn-tide. Here’s one OED citation for it:ġ870 Morris Earthly Par. ![]() Well, there is the word autumn-tide, but it doesn’t get used much. This answer is not meant to detract from Peter Shor’s, which I believe is both correct and insightful is its explanation of why autumntime occurs so rarely compared with the other three modern seasons. Variations in punctuation, spacing, and capitalization do not matter.It is quite rare in comparison with the other seasons’ versions.Unlike most dictionaries, the OED does include autumn-time.The premise that autumntime “is not a word” is faulty: it is a word.However, the song "Sumer Is Icumen In", which Wikipedia says was composed in the 13th century, is clearly about spring. Maybe people used "spring time" and "harvest time" more often earlier because "spring" and "harvest" weren't yet established words for seasons (as "summer" and "winter" were).ġ This probably didn't happen at a single point in time. ![]() The word "autumn" was borrowed from Old French in the 16th century, well after "springtime", "summertime", "harvesttime", and "wintertime" were established, and for some reason these phrases were not extended to "autumntime", even though it would have been a very logical development in English. This explains why we don't say "fall time". It also appears that the "long forms" of the names for the seasons were "spring time", "harvest time", and "fall of the leaf". It seems from these quotes that we might easily have had lent (a shortened form of lengthen) and harvest as names for spring and autumn, as these were common names for these seasons in Middle English. We can see from the OED that their names fluctuated for a while before settling into spring and fall or autumn.Ĭ1050: Þa feower timan.lengten, sumor, hærfest, & winter.Ī1387: Þe evenes of þe day and þe nyȝt is ones in þe Lente and efte in hervest.ġ545: Spring tyme, Somer, faule of the leafe, and winter. ![]() However, the other two seasons didn't have definite names. They had words for other periods of the year, but they weren't considered seasons.Īt some point near the beginning of Middle English 1, a four-season calendar was adopted. The Anglo-Saxon calendar only had two seasons, winter and summer, each six months long.
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