美國獨有的“秋”——fall

September 23, 2019, marks the start of a new season—but what exactly you should call that season depends on where in the world you are and whom you ask. 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?

2019年9月23日(秋分)標志著新季節(jié)的開始，但是你應(yīng)該如何稱呼這個季節(jié)取決于你在世界上的哪個地方以及你問的是哪國人。在英國，一年的第三個季節(jié)通常都只有一個名字：autumn。但如果你橫跨大西洋，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)人們交替使用fall和autumn來指代秋天，于是秋天便成了英語中唯一一個擁有兩個廣為接受的名字的季節(jié)。那么是什么讓這個季節(jié)如此特別呢?

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并不是秋天的傳統(tǒng)說法autumn的現(xiàn)代別稱。這兩個說法最早的記錄相距時間不到幾百年。

Before either word emerged in the lexicon, the season between summer and winter was known as harvest, or hærfest 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.

在這兩個詞出現(xiàn)之前，夏天和冬天之間的這個季節(jié)在英語中被稱為harvest，古英語是hærfest。該詞源于日耳曼語，意思是“采摘”或“收割”，指的是在冬天之前收集和儲藏糧食。

In the 1500s, English speakers began referring to the seasons separating the cold and warm months as either the 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.

在16世紀，以英語為母語的人開始用樹葉的落下(簡稱fall)或生長(簡稱spring)來指代寒熱兩季之間的幾個月。兩個詞都是既簡單又形象，但是出于某種原因，只有spring在英國流傳了下來。到了17世紀末，源自法語autompne和拉丁語autumnus的autumn取代fall成為指代第三個季節(jié)的標準英國用詞。

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.

大約在英格蘭人采用autumn來指代秋天的同一時間，第一批去美國的英國殖民者開始漂洋過海到了北美。他們將fall和autumn帶到了北美大陸，盡管前者fall在大洋彼岸已經(jīng)不再流行，但是它卻在美國獲得獨立之前在當?shù)胤窖灾姓痉€(wěn)了腳跟。如今，用兩個詞來指代冬天之前的這個季節(jié)仍然是美國獨有的做法。