harvest moon

plural harvest moons

1. The first full moon of autumn by a tropical year.

   A silvery cloud drifted over the mountains that surrounded him, its edges glowing with ruddy light cast from the harvest moon cradled between two peaks.

   2003, Christopher Paolini, “Discovery”, in Eragon, page 6

2. The full moon nearest the autumn equinox, when the moon rises the latest and lowest in the sky and seems to appear the biggest, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere.

   Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes

   1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, (please specify either |part=I or II)

   1 more example

   Boxer would even come out at nights and work for an hour or two on his own by the light of the harvest moon.

   1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC