September 23, 2019, marks the start of a new season—but what exactly you should call that season depends on where in the world you are and whom you ask.
2019年9月23日（秋分）标志着新时令的开始，但是你该当如何称呼这个时令取决于你在世界上的哪个地方以及你问的是哪国人。
In Great Britain, the third season of the year usually has only one name: autumn.
在英国，一年的第三个时令常日都只有一个名字：autumn。
But if you hop across the Atlantic, you'll find that people use both fall and autumn interchangeably when referring to this time of year, making it the only season in the English language with two widely accepted names.
但如果你横跨大泰西，你会创造人们交替利用fall和autumn来指代秋日，于是秋日便成了英语中唯一一个拥有两个广为接管的名字的时令。
那么是什么让这个时令如此特殊呢？
According to Dictionary.com, fall isn't a modern nickname that followed the more traditional autumn. The two terms are actually first recorded within a few hundred years of each other.
根据词典网站Dictionary.com，fall并不是秋日的传统说法autumn的当代别称。这两个说法最早的记录相距韶光不到几百年。
Before either word emerged in the lexicon, the season between summer and winter was known as harvest, or hærfest in Old English.
在这两个词涌现之前，夏天和冬天之间的这个时令在英语中被称为harvest，古英语是hærfest。
The word is of Germanic stock and meant \"大众picking,\"大众 \公众plucking,\"大众 or \"大众reaping,\"大众 a nod to the act of gathering and preserving crops before winter.
该词源于日耳曼语，意思是“采摘”或“收割”，指的是在冬天之前网络和储藏粮食。
In the 1500s, English speakers began referring to the seasons separating the cold and warm months as either the fall of the leaf or spring of the leaf, or fall and spring for short.
在16世纪，以英语为母语的人开始用树叶的落下（简称fall）或成长（简称spring）来指代寒热两季之间的几个月。
Both terms were simple and evocative, but for some reason, only spring had staying power in Britain. By the end of the 1600s, autumn, from the French word autompne and the Latin autumnus, had overtaken fall as the standard British term for the third season.
两个词都是既大略又形象，但是出于某种缘故原由，只有spring在英国流传了下来。到了17世纪末，源自法语autompne和拉丁语autumnus的autumn取代fall成为指代第三个时令的标准英国用词。
evocative[ɪ'vɑkətɪv]:唤起回顾的；引起共鸣的
Around the same time England adopted autumn, the first-ever British American colonists were voyaging to North America.
大约在英格兰人采取autumn来指代秋日的同一韶光，第一批去美国的英国殖民者开始漂洋过海到了北美。
With them they brought the words fall and autumn, and while the former fell out of fashion overseas, it solidified itself in the local vernacular by the time America won its independence.
他们将fall和autumn带到了北美大陆，只管前者fall在大洋彼岸已经不再盛行，但是它却在美国得到独立之前在当地方言中站稳了脚跟。
Today, using both words to describe the season before winter is still a uniquely American behavior.
如今，用两个词来指代冬天之前的这个时令仍旧是美国独占的做法。
这下你弄明白autumn和fall之间的关系了吗？
编辑：陈丹妮
英文来源：Mental Floss
声明：转载此文是出于通报更多信息之目的。若有来源标注缺点或陵犯了您的合法权柄，请作者持权属证明与本网联系，我们将及时更正、删除，感激。
