felicissimum aequinoctium auctumnale

As the title says, felicissimum aequinoctium auctumnale, friends! That means, in Latin, “a very happy autumnal equinox!” I’ve been thinking of this post for awhile now and happy to share it with you all, fully-formed, like Athene from Zeus’ head, from my brain and hands via the keyboard to y’all. I really enjoy the season of autumn, and I’m excited to see falling leaves and changing colors across the landscape. It’s second only to my love for winter; summer is dead last of the four, and spring is just behind autumn.

First of all, let’s talk about the word itself: autumn. I don’t really like the word “fall” for the season; it’s kinda boring, even with the most charitable reading of “[the time when the leaves] fall.” Autumn is a much nicer, cooler word, IMHO. And it has a really interesting etymology, which is mostly what I want to discuss in this post. If we jump to the entry for “auctumnus” in Lewis & Short (pace Perseus, = A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews’ edition of Freund’s Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by. Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and. Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.), which is what I usually use for looking up Latin words, as it’s freely available and a perfectly serviceable dictionary for hobbyists and scholars alike, we find the following (excerpted) definition:

auctumnus (correctly aut-), i, m. (autumnum, i, n., Varr.ap.Non.p.71, 20). [This word was anciently referred to augeo, as the season of increase, as by Paul. ex Fest. p. 23, 11 Müll.; so Curtius. But Corssen and others, in view of its correct form, autumnus, refer it to the Sanscr. av, to do good to, to satisfy one’s self; cf. the Gr. ἐνηής (i.e. ἐνηϝής), good, kindly, and 2.aveo, to be well.] The season of abundance, the autumn.

So Lewis & Short note that the ancients, including Varro, derived the word from augeo, “to increase” (cf. auction, augment and its derivatives, &c.), given autumn as the “season of increase.” So too the grammarian Festus derives it from augeo (although I can’t seem to find the passage where he discusses it). L&S strongly believe (e.g. “correctly,” “in view of its correct form”) that the correct form is autumnus, deriving from Sanskrit, perhaps related to Greek ἐνηής (enees), “good, kindly” and Latin aveo, “to be well” (cf. ave Maria, &c.). Honestly, I like both forms, but I kind of prefer the form with -c- personally, just for its look and sound. But obviously the -c- drops out in the form we have now, “autumn”; otherwise we’d be saying “auctumn.” And I get that; even in Latin, when you say the word auctumnus, there’s a tendency to swallow or elide the -c-, as it’s just easy to drop (cf. the evolution of original auctor, “author, originator, doer,” lit. “one who grows, increases” to author and even autor, and same with its derivatives; I’ve seen plenty of Renaissance texts with any of those forms).

When we look at OLD (Oxford Latin Dictionary), they’ve also clearly chosen a side: under the lemma for auctumnitas and auctumnus, it says “see AVT-.” And when we go to the entries under aut-, it says “also ~um, n., (auct-) (dub.)” (for “dubious”). It cites, as its oldest example of the word, Ennius’ Annales, in the phrase aestatem autumnus sequitur (“Autumn follows summer”). I’d have to look at my Skutsch Annales to check, but I wonder if the original eading was auctumnus or not. In any case, many scholars seem to prefer it without the -c- (and adduce many examples of it, so that’s cool).

Wheresoever you fall in that debate, if you care at all, the different etymologies are fascinating: either from augeo, “to increase, grow” (i.e., growing one’s stores of grain and such with the harvest), or the season where people are well, the kindly season. Why not both? The beauty of language is that we can acknowledge and appreciate and employ both etymologies at the same time, and be all the richer for it.

I wanted to mention some additional related words that are also very cool:

• au(c)tumnitas, lit. “autumnness,” another word for the season itself, and in some cases, the season’s harvest
• au(c)tumnus, -a, -um, adj., “of autumn”
• au(c)tumno, -are, “to cause or bring on autumn” (very rare, in Pliny the Elder only, as far as I can tell)
• au(c)tumnescit, -ere, “autumn approaches” (impersonal only, which makes sense)
• au(c)tumnalis, -e, “of autumn, autumnal”
• postau(c)tumnalis, -e, “post-autumnal, after autumn” (also only Plinian)

If you’re wondering also where “equinox” comes from, it’s also an interesting word, referring to the “time when the day and night are of equal length.” The Latin is aequinoctium, from aequus, “even, equal” + nox, “night.” Its adjective, naturally, is aequinoctialis (“equinoctial”). And certainly, the equinoxes’ (equinoctes’?) counterparts, the solstices, are also quite interesting: solstitium, from sol, “Sun,” + sto, “to stand,” when the sun “stands” furthest from the celestial equator (= the longest or shortest day, in summer and winter respectively).

I just wanted to share this with you all and hope you found it interesting. I’m excited for the start of autumn as we’re just that much closer to winter, but I really enjoy autumn for its own sake, and hope some of you do too!

I’d like to write some more posts like this, so we’ll see how it goes. Take care of yourselves!