Definition of "autumn"
autumn
noun
countable and uncountable, plural autumns
Traditionally the third of the four seasons, when deciduous trees lose their leaves; typically regarded as being from September 24 to December 22 in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, and the months of March, April and May in the Southern Hemisphere.
Quotations
In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.
1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.
1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
(by extension) The time period when someone or something is past its prime.
Quotations
It has been portrayed as the well-intended yet wrongly directed reaction to latter-day scholasticism, or as the harvest of medieval theology in its autumn years, as a revolution that is theological, political, economic, cultural—or all of the above.
2014, Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, Lubomír Batka, The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology
Unlike the decline of British hegemony, in the current world-system no military or economic contender has emerged to replace US hegemony. Even though the US SCA has entered its autumn with the Vietname War and the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, there has been no legitimate hegemonic contender capable of instituting a new global regime to resolve both social and economic contradictions of global capitalism.
2014, Berch Berberoglu, The Global Capitalist Crisis and Its Aftermath
verb
third-person singular simple present autumns, present participle autumning, simple past and past participle autumned
(intransitive) To spend the autumn (in a particular place).
Quotations
True it is that, owing to the migratory propensities of our countrymen, every third man has wintered at Naples, springed at Vienna, summered in Switzerland, and autumned on the banks of the Lago Maggiore;
1835 May, “Northern Germany. A Sketch.”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume XI, number LXV, page 507
Larry and Bill had planned to hold a white-linen “fancy” fund-raiser dinner in late June or early July, which would bring out the moneyed crowd who “summered” on the Island. If you summer or winter somewhere you are affluent, Larry knew. (Funny, though, he had never heard of anyone who “autumned” in Vermont or who was “springing” in Colorado.)
2010, Larry Stettner, Bill Morrison, Cooking for the Common Good: The Birth of a Natural Foods Soup Kitchen, Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, page 84
So when she summered with her family in the Mediterranean, she sailed across the ocean from New York, and when she autumned in Maine, her chauffeur drove her ten hours north through the foliage, and when winter thawed and it was time again for spring training, she met her Mets in Florida after a long journey down the coast by train.
2021, Devin Gordon, So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets—the Best Worst Team in Sports, Harper
To undergo the changes associated with autumn, such as leaves changing color and falling from trees.
Quotations
The glistening path where weeds had clung, / And tumbled bushes lay, / Was hidden now, but yet there rung / Tones of an autumned May. […] And cheers rang out, the song and shout, / For the fray had found its eve, / And pirate chief like autumned leaf, / O’er fallen pride did grieve!”
1886, Horace Eaton Walker, The Lady of Dardale and Other Poems, Manchester, N.H.: Browne & Rowe, pages 139 and 201
[…] three quarters, two thirds of the flowering tops have changed colour and these are very resinous, solid buds and the colouration of the leaf, you can see how it’s yellowed off, it’s autumning, autumn has come if you would like to put it that way.
2008, Jeffrey Winterborne, Medical Marijuana / Cannabis Cultivation: Trees of Life at the University of London, Pukka Press, pages 249–250
Spirit of Autumn, When I grow tired of using my gifts to benefit others, take me to the autumned fields where earth freely yields the bounty of her summer. […] All night a steady rain fell upon the autumned earth, moistening every dried crack of the bony summer, rinsing what lay tattered and soiled in the remnants of yesterday.
2018, Joyce Rupp, Anchors for the Soul: Daily Wisdom for Inspiration and Guidance, Notre Dame, Ind.: Sorin Books, pages 8 and 9