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:''"Fall" redirects here. For other uses, see Fall (disambiguation).'' Autumn, interchangeably known as fall in North America, is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March (Southern Hemisphere), when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier and the temperature cools considerably. One of its main features is the shedding of leaves from deciduous trees. Some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as "mid-autumn", while others with a longer temperature lag treat it as the start of autumn.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NOAA's National Weather Service - Glossary )〕 Meteorologists (and most of the temperate countries in the southern hemisphere)〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=New Zealand Weather and Climate, New Zealand Weather, Temperatures and Climate in New Zealand )〕 use a definition based on months, with autumn being September, October and November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April and May in the southern hemisphere. In North America, autumn is usually considered to start with the September equinox and end with the winter solstice (21 or 22 December).〔http://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-winter-winter-solstice〕 Popular culture in North America associates Labor Day, the first Monday in September, as the end of summer and the start of autumn; certain summer traditions, such as wearing white, are discouraged after that date. In North America, the wave of color starts in Canada. It then moves into the United States and across the Great Lakes, and continues down into the mountains of the South. Warm days followed by chilly nights provide the catalyst. In traditional East Asian solar term, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on or about 7 November. In Ireland, the autumn months according to the national meteorological service, Met Éireann, are September, October and November. However, according to the Irish Calendar, which is based on ancient Gaelic traditions, autumn lasts throughout the months of August, September and October, or possibly a few days later, depending on tradition. In Australia and New Zealand, autumn officially begins on 1 March and ends on 31 May. ==Etymology== The word ''autumn'' comes from the ancient Etruscan root ''autu-'' and has within it connotations of the passing of the year. It was borrowed by the neighbouring Romans, and became the Latin word ''autumnus''.〔''Etymology of 'autumn' '' - New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1997 Edition〕 After the Roman era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word ''autompne'' (''automne'' in modern French) or ''autumpne'' in Middle English,〔Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, entry at ''automn''.〕 and was later normalized to the original Latin. In the Medieval period, there are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use. Before the 16th century, ''harvest'' was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day (cf. Dutch ''herfst'', German ''Herbst'' and Scots ''hairst''). However, as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns, the word ''harvest'' lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and ''autumn'', as well as ''fall'', began to replace it as a reference to the season. The alternative word ''fall'' for the season traces its origins to old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English ''fiæll'' or ''feallan'' and the Old Norse ''fall'' all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are clearly derived either from a common root or from each other. The term came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year". During the 17th century, English emigration to the British colonies in North America was at its peak, and the new settlers took the English language with them. While the term ''fall'' gradually became obsolete in Britain, it became the more common term in North America. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Autumn」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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