It’s autumn! Or is it fall? Ask anyone right now and 99 out of 100 will tell you we are heading into autumn, so why did the Americans opt for fall?

The truth is, both words for the season are of British origin. Of the two, autumn came into use first somewhere in the 1300s, having been adopted from the Latin autumnus.

Fall meanwhile didn’t arrive for another 300 years, poets at the time began using the phrase ‘the fall of the leaves’ which was eventually shortened to just fall in the 1600s.

Despite the head start, when the British Empire expanded to the east coast of what is now the USA, the initial settlers used both words. But with a lack of contact between Britain and the new colonies, our languages diverged.

To begin with, autumn remained popular, but by the mid-1800s the rise of ‘fall’ in America was clear.

There is another caveat to add in that autumn itself was a replacement in Britain. Before its use, the season was usually referred to as ‘harvest’. Clearly this would create confusion with no differential in the season harvest and the actual harvest of crops.