Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 April 21

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April 21

Season Word Lengths

Is it simply a coincidence that Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn are all 6 letters long? 97.82.165.112 (talk) 17:42, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes. In Middle English summer was called somer (or sumer) and autumn used to be called fall.  --Lambiam 17:55, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

In America, fall is still used frequently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:29, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

English spelling was not very standardized until long after all these words came into use. In Middle English, "winter" had forms with more than 6 letters such as "winnterr", "whynter" and "wyntyre"; "autumn" was spelled "autumne", "autumpne" and "atome"; spring was spelled "sprenge" and "sprynge"; and "summer" was spelled "somir", "sommere", "somur", "sumir", and "summure", among other forms. The fact that modern spelling has settled on 6-letter spelling for each of these four words is coincidence. CodeTalker (talk) 20:44, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

The usage of "fall" in English is about 400 years more modern than "autumn", according to Autumn#Etymology, but both have been in use for a good long time. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 09:12, 28 April 2023 (UTC)