{"id":570,"date":"2018-10-05T13:15:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T17:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=570"},"modified":"2018-10-05T13:21:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T17:21:16","slug":"word-of-the-week-autumnal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/10\/05\/word-of-the-week-autumnal\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Autumnal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/10\/autumnal.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-575\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/10\/autumnal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"379\" height=\"284\" \/><\/a>Perhaps, by the time this post runs, the weather will match the season.\u00a0Yet we do have a lovely word of the week, one often used quite metaphorically.<\/p>\n<p>Solidly in the realm of the humanities, our word can imply middle age, as in &#8220;during my autumnal years, I plan to take up fly fishing.&#8221; We thereby imply someone past her or his prime, then, and the OED notes how in this sense &#8220;autumnal&#8221; is often negative. Personally, I find the word to be wistful rather than pejorative. Perhaps that&#8217;s just me and my next-to-favorite season (right after Winter).<\/p>\n<p>I do not often hear &#8220;vernal&#8221; used in a similar way.\u00a0 In terms of etymology,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/13553?redirectedFrom=autumnal&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED Online<\/a> takes us back to the 15th Century for both &#8220;autumn&#8221; and our adjective, borrowings from Latin.<\/p>\n<p>Students might use our word and end up sounding pretentious. I suspect it is best left for creative writing or in its literal sense of something pertaining to the Fall season, such as the autumnal equinox or &#8220;My old grade school will host its Oktoberfest this weekend, an autumnal ritual ever since my childhood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My hope is that all of us will experience autumnal weather soon this year and in the decades ahead.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Our currently endless summer fills me with dread.<\/p>\n<p>Please nominate a word or metaphor useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image of New Hampshire forest courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:New_hampshire_in_autumn.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps, by the time this post runs, the weather will match the season.\u00a0Yet we do have a lovely word of the week, one often used quite metaphorically. Solidly in the realm of the humanities, our word can imply middle age, as in &#8220;during my autumnal years, I plan to take up fly fishing.&#8221; We thereby &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/10\/05\/word-of-the-week-autumnal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Autumnal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87399,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-9c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}