COLUMBIA, S.C. — We are heading into the first day of Fall but have you ever wondered where the term Fall comes from?
To learn about the origins of this word we have to go back almost 700 years to around 1300. We are in England where the later months of the year were referred to as the harvest but, a new word has arrived on the scene to describe this cooling weather. Autumn which comes from the Latin word Autumnus.
Jump forward about 300 years to the 1600s, European colonizers have moved over to the Americas and a new word has emerged from England, Fall. Derived from the phrase “Fall of the leaves” Fall offered a more poetic name for the months of September through November. Well, it turns out Americans by the 17 and 18 hundreds really liked this compared to the word Autumn and it quickly became the default name here across the United States.
Fall is all caused due to the tilt of the Earth. This time of the year the equator faces directly at the sun which means we see equal length days and nights. As we see less and less sunshine our temperatures in the northern hemisphere begin to fall.
As for our days going forward, while Fall begins on Thursday, next Monday is when we can expect our day to be exactly 12 hours long. By the time we get to the first day of winter we will be sitting at around only 10 hours of sunlight in the Midlands.