Talk:Autumn

When did the use of "fall" become outdated? I've never heard of that and I have experience with both British and American English. It's still very much in use in Canada, which for the most part follows British English. 23skidoo 06:05, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nobody uses it in the UK, I'm not sure if they ever did. violet/riga (t) 09:55, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Canadian vocabulary is much (much, much) closer to American English than Brit English: "apartment", "elevator", "diaper", "fall", etc. etc. It's only closer to British English in the spelling of certain words ("colour", "centre", and so forth)

I started to write a fairly long reply here a couple of weeks ago where I traced the claim through H.L. Mencken to a nineteenth century original which he cited. Then the system barfed so I lost it.

Oh here it is:

From H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.

Chapter 5. Archaic English Words

• here

A very large number of words and phrases, many of them now exclusively American, are similar survivals from the English of the seventeenth century, long since obsolete or merely provincial in England. Among nouns Thornton notes fox-fire, flap-jack, jeans, molasses, beef (to designate the live animal), chinch, cordwood, home-spun, ice-cream, julep and swingle-tree; Halliwell¹ adds andiron, bay-window, cesspool, clodhopper, cross-purposes, greenhorn, loop-hole, ragamuffin and trash; and other authorities cite stock (for cattle), fall (for autumn), offal, din, underpinning and adze. Bub, used in addressing a boy, is very old English, but survives only in American. Flapjack goes back to Piers Plowman, but has been obsolete in England for two centuries. Muss, in the sense of a row, is also obsolete over there, but it is to be found in “Anthony and Cleopatra.” Char, as a noun, disappeared from English a long time ago, save in the compound, charwoman, but it survives in America as chore. Among the verbs similarly preserved are to whittle, to wilt and to approbate. To guess, in the American sense of to suppose, is to be found in “Henry VI”:

¹ J. O. Halliwell (Phillips): A Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms, Containing Words now Obsolete in England All of Which are Familiar and in Common Use in America, 2nd ed.; London, 1850. See also Gilbert M. Tucker’s American English; New York, 1921, p. 39 ff.

(emphasis is mine)

Hmmm, several of these words should today be well-known in BE, due to the impact of American culture (Ice Cream, Jeans, Loophole, Trash at least...)

So there you are! --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:34, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nor is it used in Australia. It must have fallen out of use before conolisation. - Jim 18Mar05

I've had to delete the wikimedia commons link due to a)my poor knowledge of HTML and b)the pic seasons template. Could one of you add it in.

..in North America

The article begins by saying that "Fall" is used in North America... I wasnt aware that the spanish speaking mexicans used that term. Perhaps a reprasing to "Fall is used in the US and Canada" or even "in english-speaking America". (unsigned, but by contribs) )

It doesn't say that the word Fall is the only word used on the entire continent, it says Fall is also used on the continent. You are reading something into it that it doesn't say, therefore your clarification is unnecessary. DreamGuy 14:43, 9 November 2005 (UTC)