Both the US and Britain took a leaf out of the same book back in the 17th century when it came to naming seasons.
Thanks to British settlers in the New World, the two British names for our third season – Autumn and Fall (short for Fall of the Leaf) – entered the American language.
But, over the next few hundred years, Americans favoured the word Fall whereas the Brits back in England favoured the word Autumn.
Autumn incidentally comes from the Old French word autompne (now automne in modern French) which in turn comes from the Latin word automnus.
Other words for Autumn which derive from Latin include the Italian word autunno, the Spanish otoño and the Portuguese outono.
And? Fall is from “fall of the leaves”, good. That’s what I suspected.
A whole article about different international versions of the word… okay, interesting. But… What does “autumn” actually mean? What is the etymology of the word?