Nearby Tring is a charming town, with a fast train into London.Īldbury is a picturesque village with an all day pub/restaurant Īshridge also has some native woodland & working farms nearby. has adopted an American-style Halloween, there are still plenty of uniquely British traditions to distract us as the leaves turn. But how do Brits fill their days this time of year While the U.K. You might consider hiring a car, but a bit of adventurous spirit & a train/bus timetable could make for a great day out.įor me, it brings back the England of my childhood - people out walking their dogs, sandwiches picnics, being outside & families spending time together. As fall fell out of fashion on our side of the Atlantic, Brits reverted to calling it autumn, and thus, the disparity began. I personally prefer Ashridge as it has a little licensed cafe (tea/ cake/sandwiches & sangria !) & visitor center in the shadow of the Bridewater memorial- National Trust - & the local villages & pubs are a treat. Just outside London, you will find Epping Forest (on the tube) & Ashridge Forest - both suitable for a day's autumnal walking. Kew Gardens will be good, & a river trip could be splendid. So early to mid October will provide some colour. Temperatures outside London are some 4 degrees cooler so the leaves will turn & drop slightly sooner. I would say that mid to late October is the prime season for London - park keepers tend to pile the leaves up for compost, & GENERALLY the trees seem bare by Bonfire night. Obviously, the 'tipping point' varied from year to year determined by summer rainfall & trend temperatures. There are relativly few evergreens in London, the parks & residential streets mostly have deciduous trees,so you are never far from a pile of autumnal leaves. From the top of the buses swinging round HP Corner, the vibrant fiery display would cheer my gloomy heart as I mooched into work. (photo courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography via Freedigitalphotos.Hyde Park is particularly lovely. Hopefully you’ve learnt something from reading this? I certainly did researching it. “ Fall is better on the merits than autumn, in every way: it is short, Saxon (like the other three season names), picturesque it reveals its derivation to every one who uses it, not to the scholar only, like autumn.” Autumn or fall: which is best?īrits may view many Americanisms as inferior, but few could disagree with H.E. The former is the informal, everyday choice the latter is mainly used in scientific, literary and poetic contexts. But English-speaking Canadians switch between fall and autumn. As you’d expect, Canadian Francophones use l’automne. However, naming the season between summer and winter isn’t quite so straightforward in Canada. This may well be because most of the indigenous trees in Australia are evergreens, so they don’t experience a lot of falling leaves. What about Australia and Canada?Īustralian writers tend to opt for autumn. We’re used to seeing fall mentioned in the media with reference to American television series or holidays to New England in the Fall. Autumn gained the upper hand in Britain to the extent that fall was eventually considered archaic.īut it is, at least, familiar to Brits today. According to Writing Explained, autumn is considered a more formal way to refer to the season than fall and continues to be more popular in England. Fall became the more common word in North America. In the 17 th century, English-speaking emigrants took both words with them to the New World. Arrival of autumnīy the 16 th century, autumn had been ‘borrowed’ from the French automne (itself derived from the Latin autumnus). These were shortened to the one-word form by the 17 th century, which was long before the development of AmE. Spring and fall initially appeared around the 16 th century as spring of the leaf and fall of the leaf (both the words spring and fall being Germanic in origin ). This eventually became relegated to a mere agricultural term. First it was harvest…Ī fascinating article on Slate reveals that back in the 12 th and 13 th centuries spring was called lent or lenten. The “third season of the year” was called harvest, as in “a time of reaping”. What I discovered was that although fall is now widely used in the U.S., the term is neither exclusively American nor American in origin. The noun form of fall refers to the act of falling from a height. As a verb, fall means to drop from a height. So now that autumn has officially begun, I thought I’d do a bit of delving. What Does Fall Mean Fall functions as either a verb or a noun. Yet we can’t seem to agree what to call this time of the year. We use w inter, spring and summer on both sides of the pond. One of the many differences between British English and American English that’s always intrigued me is autumn vs.
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