Ever wonder how the seasons got their names?

Spring


"Spring" is an old word, and appears in many Germanic languages with a meaning like "to jump" or "to run".

Autumn or Fall


It can have two names: "Autumn" or "Fall". Which one do the students use most often? Nowadays, the name "Fall" is probably used most often in American English, though "Autumn" is used as well. In British English, however, the word "Autumn" is used almost exclusively--British English used the word "Fall" for this season quite often, though now it is only sometimes found in some dialects of British English.

Summer


What is Summer? It is when school is out! It is also the warm and sunny season of the year, when sun is up more than at other times of the year and doesn't set until late in the evening. Not surprisingly, people have needed a word for summer for a very long time. In fact, of all the words for seasons used by the people who spoke Indo-European about six thousand (6000) years ago, only one of them is still used in English: summer. The Indo-Europeans used a basic word that started "sem-". By about two thousand (2000) years ago, people speaking Germanic had taken this basic start and turned it into "sumaraz". People who spoke Old English about one thousand (1000) years ago said "sumor". People who spoke Middle English about six hundred (600) years ago used a word like "sumer" or "sommer", which has become our word "summer". Here is how the Germanic word "sumaraz" turned out in other Germanic languages:

Winter


What is winter? It is the cold season, the snowy season--and if it isn't quite cold enough for snow it can be the wet season as well! In fact, our word "winter" is related to our words "wet", "water", and "wash". All these words come from an Indo-European basic form "wed-". People speaking Germanic, about two thousand (2000) years ago, used a word "wentruz" to mean "winter" (or "wet season"--for comparison, the Germanic word for "water" was "watar").