你知道嗎？在英國，秋天的英語就是autumn，而在美國，秋天既可以用autumn來表達，也可以稱作fall。為什么美國人會用兩個詞來指代秋天呢？

September 23, 2023, marks the start of a new season—but what exactly you should call that season depends on where in the world you are. In Great Britain, the third season of the year usually has only one name: autumn. But if you hop across the Atlantic, you’ll find that people use both fall and autumn interchangeably when referring to this time of year, making it the only season in the English language with two widely accepted names. So what is it about the season that makes it so special?

2023年9月23日標志著新的季節(jié)來臨，但是你要如何稱呼這個季節(jié)取決于你在這個世界所在的地方。在英國，一年的第三個季節(jié)只有一個名字：autumn。但如果你來到大西洋的對岸，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)那里的人們常常交互使用fall和autumn來指代這個季節(jié)，于是秋天就成了唯一一個在英語中擁有兩個廣為接受的名字的季節(jié)。那么這個季節(jié)為什么會這么特別呢？

According to Dictionary.com, fall isn’t a modern nickname that followed the more traditional autumn. The two terms are actually first recorded within a few hundred years of each other.

根據(jù)詞典網(wǎng)站Dictionary.com，fall不是在傳統(tǒng)名稱autumn之后出現(xiàn)的現(xiàn)代綽號。事實上，這兩個詞首次被記錄的時間前后相差不到幾百年。

Before either word emerged in the lexicon, the season between summer and winter was known as harvest, or h?rfest in Old English. The word is of Germanic stock and meant “picking,” “plucking,” or “reaping,” a nod to the act of gathering and preserving crops before winter.

在這兩個詞被收入詞典之前，夏季和冬季之間的這個季節(jié)被稱為harvest（古英語是h?rfest）。這個詞源于日耳曼語系，意思是“采摘”或“收獲”，旨在向冬季前收割和儲存莊稼的行為致敬。

In the 1500s, English speakers began calling the seasons separating the cold and warm months “fall of the leaf” or “spring of the leaf,” or “fall” and “spring” for short. Both terms were simple and evocative, but for some reason, only spring had staying power in Britain. By the end of the 1600s, autumn, from the French word autompne and the Latin autumnus, had overtaken fall as the standard British term for the third season.

16世紀，以英語為母語的人開始將間隔寒冷和炎熱月份的季節(jié)稱作fall of the leaf或spring of the leaf，或簡稱為fall和spring。這兩個詞都是既簡單又形象，但是出于某種原因，只有指代春季的spring在英國被保留了下來。到17世紀末，源于法語autompne 和拉丁語autompne 的詞語autumn取代fall成為指代秋季的標準英語名稱。

Around the same time England adopted autumn, the first-ever British American colonists were voyaging to North America. With them they brought the words fall and autumn, and while the former fell out of fashion overseas, it solidified itself in the local vernacular by the time America won its independence. Today, using both words to describe the season before winter is still a uniquely American behavior.

大約在英格蘭人開始用autumn來指代秋季的時候，第一批殖民美國的英國人漂洋過海來到了北美。他們把fall和autumn都帶到了美國，盡管前者在英國已經(jīng)被棄用，但是卻在美國獨立之前在當?shù)胤窖灾姓痉€(wěn)了腳跟。時至今日，用兩個詞來指代秋季依然是美國人獨有的行為。

英文來源：Mental Floss

翻譯&編輯：丹妮