In the Western world we divide the year into four seasons:
spring, summer, fall/autumn, and winter. The Spanish equivalents are primavera, verano, otoño, and invierno. The reason for having four
seasons seems to be that Latin also recognized four, known as vēr, aestas, autumnus and hiems. Actually, it seems that the
primary or earliest season division in the Roman world was a dual one, between aestas, the warm part of the year and,
and hiems, the cold part.
Figure 126:
The seasons.[i]
Let us look at the four Latin names for the Roman seasons in turn and find
out how they relate to the Spanish names of the seasons and to a few other
Spanish and English words.
Spring
The name for spring in Latin was vēr (genitive vēris,
regular root vēr‑) ‘the spring’, a masculine noun. The
adjective for this noun was vērnus
‘of or belonging to spring’ in classical Latin, but this was changed in Vulgar
Latin to vēranus ‘of
the spring’, used in the Vulgar Latin phrase veranum tempus
‘springtime’. This phrase would eventually turn into the word verano in Spanish, which in the middle
ages referred to the spring. However, by the 16th century, Sp. verano it referred to the end of the
spring, and the beginning of the summer. Eventually verano ended up replacing the word for summer, which had been estío (see below), which is now a formal
or fancy word for ‘summer’.
Sp. primavera ‘spring’,
comes from the Vulgar Latin phrase prīma
vēra ‘at the beginning of the
spring’, from Classical Lat. prīmō
vēr (same meaning), from primus ‘first’ (masculine ablative case:
prīmō) and vēr (nom. and acc.; abl. vēre) ‘spring’ (vēr,
like other third declension neuter nouns, later changed to being feminine). In
other words, it would seem that the word for spring came to signify something
like ‘warm times’ and the phrase that meant ‘first spring’ or ‘beginning of
spring’ came to be the new word for ‘spring’ and the word for spring came to
replace the word for ‘summer’.
It is interesting that the word primavera is not attested in Spanish until the 15th century, though
it is found earlier in Catalan and Italian in the previous century. Since the
word is common also to other Romance languages, such as Portuguese, it is
likely that it was a common Romance word from early on, but its increased use
in Spanish may have been influenced by other surrounding Romance languages.
Note that English too has borrowed the word primavera [ˌpʰɹi.mə.ˈvɛ.ɹə],
primarily as an adjective used to describe dishes and meaning something like ‘made
with lightly sautéed spring vegetables’ (COED). This modifier typically comes
after the noun, as in pasta primavera
or pizza primavera.[1]
According to the OED, this adjective ‘designat[es] any of various dishes, esp.
pasta dishes, served with fresh vegetables and usually a light sauce’ and also
‘a sauce of this type’. As for the source for this English word, though the
word does not seem to be used commonly this way in Italian, although the phrase
alla primavera ‘in the style of
springime’ is conceivable in this language.
The adjective for Sp. primavera
is primaveral ‘of spring,
spring-like’. Note that whereas in the northern hemisphere, primavera refers to
the period between March and June, in the southern hemisphere it refers to the
period between September and December (the northern hemisphere’s autumn). And,
as we shall see, in regions close to the tropics where only two main seasons
are typically recognized, the term dos not have the same importance.
As we said earlier, the Latin adjective for the word for
summer vēr was vērnus, but Latin also
developed another (rare) adjective from this word by means of the adjectival
suffix ‑āl(is), namely Latin vernālis ‘of those things pertaining to
the spring’. This adjective has been borrowed by Spanish but it is very rare,
only found in phrases such as equinocio
vernal ‘ spring equinox’. English too has the fancy adjective vernal ‘relating or appropriate to
spring’, typically also only used in rare phrases such as vernal equinox, vernal
breezes, or vernal bloom.
Summer
The Latin word for summer was aestās (genitive: aestātis;
regular root aestāt‑). This
word could be used in two different ways however. One was as ‘the summer
season, as one half of the year, from March twenty-second to September
twenty-second’ (L&S; the other half was hiems,
the winter season, see below). In ‘a restricted sense’, however, the word could
refer to ‘the summer, the three months from the entrance of the sun into Cancer
to the autumnal equinox’ (L&S). The word aestas was related to the noun aestus that meant primarily ‘heat, fire’
Derived from aestas
was the adjective aestīvus,
formed with the adjectival suffix ‑īv(us)
(aest‑īv‑us). This
word was used, for example, in the phrase aestīvum
tĕmpus ‘summer time/season’ and from the first part of
the phrase, aestivum, would come the patrimonial
word estío in Spanish, which was the
word for ‘summer’ in Old Spanish and currently a fancy alternative for verano.
Another, derived Latin adjective for the word for summer was
aestīvālis, derived from the
adjective aestīvus by addition of an
additional adjectival suffix, again ‑āl‑(is) (aest‑īv‑āl‑is). Spanish
has a fancy, learned adjective derived from this Latin noun, namely estival ‘of the summer’, as in época estival ‘summertime’. This word
comes from the English too has borrowed this adjective (14th century) as estival (æstival in British English), which is also a fancy way to express
the meaning ‘of or relating to the summer’, as in estival winds or estival blue.
Fall
The word for ‘fall/autumn’ in Latin was autŭmnus (genitive: autumnī;
regular root: autŭmn‑). It
was used as a noun but also as an adjective, meaning ‘of the autumn/fall’. An
early version of this Latin word was auctumnus,
with a c, but its etymology is
unclear. From this word comes Sp. otoño
‘autumn/fall’, which shows all but one of the expected sound changes, such as
the simplification of the diphthong au
to o, the change of short ŭ
to o, and the change of mn to ñ [ɲ] (cf. Part
I, Chapter 10).
For some reason, however, the intervocalic ‑t‑
did not change to ‑d‑, as expected,
probably by influence of the written Latin word at some point, since we would
have expected a fully patrimonial word like this to change to odoño. In other words, the word seems to
be semi-learned (Sp. semicultismo).
Although the word could be used as an adjective, Latin also
derived the adjective autŭmnālis
by means of the adjectival suffix ‑āl(is) (autumn‑āl‑is). Spanish has borrowed this
word as otoñal ‘of autumn/fall’,
which has a cognate in English autumnal,
‘relating to, resembling, or associated with autumn’, as in the phrase autumnal colors.
The autumn comes between summer and winter and it is
associated with the losing of leaves by deciduous trees. In the northern
hemisphere, the season is from September to December, but in the southern
hemisphere, it is from March to June. As in the case of spring, many cultures
have little use for the name for this season since it has no climate correlates
in regions of the planet closer to the tropics.
Winter
Finally, the word for ‘winter’ in Latin hĭems or hiemps,
a cognate with Ancient Greek χιών (khiṓn)
‘snow’. Another word for ‘winter’, however, was hībernum, which in the plural (hīberna)
meant ‘winter quarters’. This noun was derived
from the adjective hībĕrnus
‘wintry, of or pertaining to the winter’. From this, we get the phrase hībĕrnum tĕmpus
‘wintertime’, from which comes Old Spanish noun ivierno for ‘winter’ which later underwent the addition of an unexplained
intrusive ‑n‑, resulting in invierno [im.ˈbi̯eɾ.no]. (This is one of the few
words were non-etymological use of the letter v in Old Spanish was not restored later on to an etymologically appropriate
b in the 18th century.)
A further derived adjective for this season’s name in Latin was
hībernālis or hiemālis, again derived by means of the adjectival suffix ‑āl(is)
(hībern‑āl‑is or hĭem‑āl‑is). The Spanish
equivalent is invernal ‘of the
winter’. English also borrowed this as a fancy adjective in the early 17th
century, namely hibernal ‘of,
relating to, or occurring in winter’. English also borrowed the adjective hibernal in the 17th century, though it
is quite rare.[2]
From the adjective hībernus,
Latin derived the verb hībernāre
‘to pass the winter, winter, occupy winter-quarters’ (L&S). From the
passive participle form hībernātus
of this verb, English got its verb hibernate
in the early 19th century with the meaning ‘to spend the winter in a dormant
state’ (said of an animal or plant). The Spanish equivalent is the learned cognate
hibernar, though Spanish also has the
patrimonial verb invernar, which
means ‘to spend the winter’ as well as ‘to hibernate’.
The seasons in other languages and the dates
Modern-day Germanic languages tend to also have four
words to name the seasons, but only two of them are cognate across Germanic
languages, which indicates that originally there were probably only two and
that the two extra ones were added under the influence of Latin. The North
Germanic languages, that is, the Scandinavian ones, still use only primarily a
two-season division, equivalent to summer and winter (Latin vēr and hĭems, in the broad sense).
The actual starting dates for these two seasons in these countries are
traditionally St. Tiburtius’ day (14 April) and St. Callistus’ day (14
October).
As we have seen, English
only uses one of the Latin names for the seasons, namely autumn [ˈɔ.ɾəm],
and then only primarily in some dialects. This word was borrowed into English
in the late 14th century. The original name for this time of the year in Old
English and Middle English was harvest,
which autumn eventually replaced. The
heart of the season is reckoned to be between September and November in North
America, approximately, but in England, it is more like August through October.
In North American English, autumn is
a fancy word and the common name for that season is fall, which is short for fall
of the leaf, a name that has been attested since the 16th century. The word
spring is short for spring of the year and is also attested
since the 16th century.
The two-part seasonal division of the year is also found in
Celtic languages, where the words for these two seasons tend to be cognates,
whereas the word for spring and fall are more recent additions and vary from
language to language. The division of the seasons in two is quite common around
the world in countries in latitudes closer to the tropics, including in
Spanish-speaking countries. In these countries, invierno stands for the tropical rain season that lasts between
three and six months and verano
stands for the dry season.
The dates when the seasons are reckoned to start and end has
also varied a great deal from time to time and from place to place, for obvious
reasons having to do with the differences on when the weather changes. Nowadays,
we use the dates of the equinoxes (around March 21 and September 21) and the
solstices (around June 21 and December 21) for the starts of the seasons, but
that is not how cultures have typically divided seasons. In Ireland, for
instance, traditionally spring started on February 1, which coincided with St.
Bride’s (or Brigid’s) day, a replacement for the pre-Christian Imbolc (Oímelc in modern Irish); summer started
on May 1, May Day, a date traditionally associated with the Bealtaine
celebration; autumn started on August 1, associated with Lúnasa (Lughnasadh); and
winter on November 1, associated with Samhain.
There is indeed a connection between the equinoxes and
solstices and the varying temperatures during the seasons, in particular the
solstices. That is because the temperature changes have to do with the varying
tilt of the Earth towards the sun and the solstices are the times when the
inclination is greatest, one way or another.
Figure 127: Angle of the Sun’s rays in
winter solstice[ii]
The Sun’s rays hit the northern hemisphere of the Earth at
the most direct angle during the summer equinox and at the least direct angle
during the winter equinox. (The opposite is the case in the southern hemisphere.)
The weather associated with a particular season, however, does not come on the
solstices, however, due to something known as the seasonal lag, which has to do with the large amount of heat or
coldness retained in oceanic water. The lag may be of 2-3 weeks at the poles
and as much as 12 weeks in lower latitudes. So, although spring (warmer weather)
starts officially around June 21 in the northern hemisphere, the hotter days of
summer do not come for a few more weeks. Likewise, we do not detect an automatic
change for the better around the March 21 equinox, but rather a few weeks later.
This explains why May 1st, or May Day, was considered the beginning of warm weather
(‘summer’) in traditional cultures such as the Irish one (cf. Chapter 44,
§44.6.6.3).
[1] There is also a noun primavera in English that refers to ‘the
hard, light-coloured wood of a Central American tree (Cybistax donnellsmithii)’
(COED).
[2] This word should not be confused with the word for ‘Ireland’ in Medieval
Latin, namely Hibernia (cf. the
borrowed English adjective Hibernian,
and the combining form Hiberno-, as
in Hiberno-English). Lat. Hibernia is a corruption of an earlier Iverna, also spelled Iuuerna, Iuverna, and Iuberna in
the Middle Ages, which was a loanword from Ancient Greek Ἰ̄έρνη (Īérnē), Ἰ̄ουερνία
(Īouernía) or Ἱ̄βερνία (Hībernía), which is ultimately a loanword
from Old Celtic *Iveriu, (accusative
*Iverionem, regular stem: *Iverion‑), the source of Irish Eriu and Erinn, the name of the country of Ireland in Irish.
[i] Source: By estherbydesign,
posted September 7, 2017. In Marvelous Works, http://www.estherbydesign.org/to-everything-there-is-a-season/
(obtained: 2008.05.01)
