Wordsmithing Spring
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Quick! What is the word "wes-r" [Wess-er]and how does it relate to Spring? Hi! I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. Want to know the answers? Listen to today's commentator, Zhenya Gallon.

Vernal equinox is the term for the actual physical shift in Spring, when day and night are equal around the world.

Where does that word vernal come from?

Some 8,000 years ago, Indo-Europeans farming somewhere north of the Black Sea had a name for springtime. Wes-r [WESS-er]. How do we know? Linguistic scholars noticed that all the languages of Europe, the Middle East and India shared common sounds for words with related meanings. Sometimes a sound would shift over distance and time. So what began as wes-r became wer, and then ver, and wound up "vernum"," a latin word for spring.

What about that word? As the days grow warmer, folks sure don't say they've got vernal fever, do they? Nope! It's spring fever.

The word spring comes to us from Old High German, not Latin. It, too, has an Indo-European root: sprengh [SPRENG], meaning "rapid movement." In Old English, springan meant "to leap." Gradually, a spring came to mean a place where water leaps up out of the ground. Scholars and poets have linked this imagery to the time when plants leap up.

When exactly did the word spring begin to mean the season heralded by the vernal equinox? Experts say, not until the late 14th century. Until then, the season was called lencten, or lent, the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter,. It was derived from an Old English word with Germanic roots meaning "long days."

From wes-r, to greening time, bursting growth to lengthening days. The derivations of words for spring tell us something about how people saw their world and about the things that mattered to them. Happy Spring!

Thanks today to contributor Zhenya Gallon, who celebrates spring in Boulder, Colorado. The Weather Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported by the National Science Foundation. Check out spring and all your favorite seasons at www.weathernotebook.org.