wordaday

According to the OED, until about 1600, harvest was preferred over autumn to describe the season between Summer and Winter. Harvest as a noun is

1. The act or process of gathering a crop.

• 2a. The crop that ripens or is gathered in a season.
• b. The amount or measure of the crop gathered in a season.
• c. The time or season of such gathering.

3. The result or consequence of an activity (AHD).

In earlier eras, when life was more closely tied to an agricultural calendar and rural living, it makes sense for autumn to be seen as the season of harvest, when we cut down crops and livestock and prepare food for winter storage. In that context, the etymology of harvest is very telling. Modern English harvest is from Middle English, via Old English hærfest. Harvest has a proto Indo-European root of *kerp-, which, the AHD tells us, means “To gather, pluck, harvest, and which also gives us carpet; excerpt, scarce, from Latin carpere, to pluck. ” These are all words that have to do with cutting, or removing something from a larger whole. You might already be familiar with Latin carpere, to pluck, from the expression carpe diem, which I’ll write about tomorrow.

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