autumn

plural autumns · alternative obsolete autum

1. countableuncountableTraditionally the third of the four seasons, when deciduous trees lose their leaves, and temperatures and daylight hours decrease; typically regarded as spanning the months of September, October, and November in the Northern Hemisphere, and the months of March, April and May in the Southern Hemisphere.

   autumn leaves

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   The Spring, the Sommer, / The childing Autumne, angry Winter change / Their wonted Liueries, […]

   c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 149, column 1

   In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.

   1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom / I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not've got 'em

   2000, “Stan”, in The Marshall Mathers LP, performed by Eminem

   Synonyms: fall, harvest, back end

2. broadlycountableuncountableThe time period when someone or something is past its prime.

   She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its autumn.

   1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House

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   It has been portrayed as the well-intended yet wrongly directed reaction to latter-day scholasticism, or as the harvest of medieval theology in its autumn years, as a revolution that is theological, political, economic, cultural—or all of the above.

   2014, Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, Lubomír Batka, The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology, →ISBN

   Unlike the decline of British hegemony, in the current world-system no military or economic contender has emerged to replace US hegemony. Even though the US SCA has entered its autumn with the Vietname War and the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, there has been no legitimate hegemonic contender capable of instituting a new global regime to resolve both social and economic contradictions of global capitalism.

   2014, Berch Berberoglu, The Global Capitalist Crisis and Its Aftermath, →ISBN

   The autumn of life is also a matter of saying farewell, but the strange thing is that I do not feel it is autumn.

   2014, May Sarton, At Seventy: A Journal, →ISBN

   Synonyms: decline

3. countableuncountablefashionA person with relatively dark hair and a warm skin tone, seen as best suited to certain colours in clothing.

present singular third person autumns · participle present autumning · participle past autumned · past autumned · alternative obsolete autum

1. intransitiveTo spend the autumn (in a particular place).

   She springed in London, summered in Stockholm, autumned at Vichy, and wintered at Monte Carlo.

   1950, Chambers’s Journal, page 269

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   True it is that, owing to the migratory propensities of our countrymen, every third man has wintered at Naples, springed at Vienna, summered in Switzerland, and autumned on the banks of the Lago Maggiore;

   1835 May, “Northern Germany. A Sketch.”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume XI, number LXV, page 507

   If Tad’s father and Tad had wintered, springed, summered, and autumned together for an hundred years instead of fifteen they could[…]

   1912, William C[yrus] Sprague, Tad, the Story of a Boy who Had No Chance, page 2

   They wintered in a warm place / And summered in a cold, / But where they springed and autumned / I never have been told.

   1937, Mortimer Jones, “Lines of No Importance”, in The Alphi Phi Quarterly, page 29

   Floyd Waggaman, the namesake of “Floyd’s Folly,” summered and autumned at Siasconset, which your columnist has been told is hard by Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, or one of the disenchanted isles.

   1938 November 18, Princeton Alumni Weekly, volume XXXIX, number 8, page 180

   The major’s office, young pudgy Major Lewis whose wife once offered Joe a bag of peanuts and who summered in New England and early-autumned in New York.

   1944, O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, page 111

2. ambitransitiveTo (cause to) undergo the changes associated with autumn, such as leaves changing color and falling from trees.

   […]he himself roamed with innocent Kate through the fast autumning woods[…]

   1887, Virginia Sandars, “The Duke of Melton”, in London Society, volume LII, London: F. V. White & Co., page 185

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   The glistening path where weeds had clung, / And tumbled bushes lay, / Was hidden now, but yet there rung / Tones of an autumned May.[…]And cheers rang out, the song and shout, / For the fray had found its eve, / And pirate chief like autumned leaf, / O’er fallen pride did grieve!”

   1886, Horace Eaton Walker, The Lady of Dardale and Other Poems, Manchester, N.H.: Browne & Rowe, pages 139 and 201

   She turns off towards the river, where the lawns lie autumned on the banks between the frayed golden willow branches.

   2003, Antjie Krog, A Change of Tongue, →ISBN, page 98

   […]three quarters, two thirds of the flowering tops have changed colour and these are very resinous, solid buds and the colouration of the leaf, you can see how it’s yellowed off, it’s autumning, autumn has come if you would like to put it that way.

   2008, Jeffrey Winterborne, Medical Marijuana / Cannabis Cultivation: Trees of Life at the University of London, Pukka Press, →ISBN, pages 249–250

   Spirit of Autumn, When I grow tired of using my gifts to benefit others, take me to the autumned fields where earth freely yields the bounty of her summer.[…]All night a steady rain fell upon the autumned earth, moistening every dried crack of the bony summer, rinsing what lay tattered and soiled in the remnants of yesterday.

   2018, Joyce Rupp, Anchors for the Soul: Daily Wisdom for Inspiration and Guidance, Notre Dame, Ind.: Sorin Books, →ISBN, pages 8 and 9

plural Autumns

1. A female given name from English of modern usage, from autumn, the name of the season.