By Mauranda Men ’16, Feature Editor

While it’s wonderful to have this set celebrating the season known as “fall,” the same period of time is also known by another moniker: “autumn.” Referring to the season as autumn is something seldom heard now, as if it were some archaic or outdated and obsolete word. Is there something against it?

The word autumn comes from the Latin autumnus—pretty straightforward, right? It’s defined as the third season in the year, harvest season, the one from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice, and so on. Many other languages take the same root in their naming of the season. In contrast, using “fall,” a word bearing additional connotations, to describe the season is a uniquely North American construction. Asking Google to define fall returns many results, the final definition of the noun form being: “autumn.”

With Newark Academy being the highly erudite school that it is, it is clear at a glance that our population should definitely gravitate towards autumn. I wondered, then, if maybe I’d just been hearing wrong. Of course, I set out to ensure I wasn’t just imagining the ostracizing of autumn.

After asking roughly twenty members of the upper school community for their opinions, I found that almost everybody favored fall or was ambivalent. Those who were ambivalent admitted to generally using fall anyway. Why? As Melisa Yaman ’19 thought, “It’s probably because it’s one syllable versus two. Laziness.” Even in an environment with the massive amounts of work we all do, “autumn” just isn’t worth the effort. Or is it?

One person, and only one, preferred autumn. Explaining herself, Elizabeth Merrigan ’16 opined, “Fall is just so lacking. Autumn confers so much more grace.” Perhaps we’re not simply lazy. Our lack of attention to the aesthetics of our conversations might also explain the one-sidedness of this question.

“Fall” may just be the next step in our evolving language for the season. Up until the sixteenth century, the season was simply referred to as “harvest,” for perhaps obvious reasons. The switch to autumn occurred later for no apparent reason. “Fall,” though, might indicate our progression back to practicality, for while not many of us worry about when to harvest the crops, we do see the falling leaves and feel the falling hours of sleep.

Whether it is replacing autumn or not, fall is definitely here to stay at Newark Academy. “Autumn sports” simply sounds silly and “autumn semester” seems to extend the term as we speak. Autumn may be a small thing to be losing, but it won’t be absent from this entire set of writing about it, at least. Consider this: if we give up autumn, who will understand Google’s definition for fall? Not understanding Google…now there’s a dilemma that might not be as one-sided as this one.