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Autumn things

The weather seems to be getting more autumnal now. It’s colder, gloomier and rainier now than it once was.

I was thinking earlier; there’s a denominal adjective (that just means an adjective formed from a noun (I think)) for autumn, which is autumnal; there’s one for winter, which is wintry, there’s summery from summer, but what about spring? Springy? Springal? A peek at the online OED suggests it’s not springal:

Springal(d [1]
Obs. exc. Hist.
An engine of the nature of a bow or catapult, used in mediæval warfare for throwing heavy missiles; also, a missile thrown by an engine of this kind.
Springal(d [2]
Now arch.

  1. A young man, a youth, a stripling.
  2. attrib. as adj. Youthful, adolescent.
    Cf. Cheshire dial. springow, nimble, active.

But, looking at spring, the season, it tells you: it’s vernal:

Spring
The first season of the year, or that between winter and summer, reckoned astronomically from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice…

So now you know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday 23rd September, 2008 @ 11.17am BST Europe/London and is filed under Language and Linguistics, Weather and seasons and is tagged with , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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