Alt text:
Of course in reality this is just a US/UK thing; in British English, 'fall' is the brief period in between and 'autumn' is the main season.
British person here.
Never heard of fall till American TV made it here
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
132 points (98.5% liked)
xkcd
8822 readers
108 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
American here...
Everyone I've ever known has used Fall and Autumn interchangeably.
German here. We call it Herbst
I never heard of fall until I watched an Apple keynote
American here. I went to first grade with a girl named Autumn. Other than her I've never heard anyone use the word, though I've seen it in print enough to know elsewhere in the English speaking world it is used.
Mainland European here, I've never heard of fall, but I did hear someone descend a stairwell in an unfamiliar manner. Does that count?
thatsthejoke.jpg. The alt text is saying that the UK have fall and autumn the other way around.
We don't have fall at all.
I know (I'm British) and the US doesn't have Autumn. They are the other way around.
In the comic, the US has both, with Autumn in the brief period before Summer ends and Fall starts. The alt text is saying the UK has the two the other way around.
it's winter that is just weeks away.
Or as we call it in the Southern U.S., "Summer Lite," where the daily high temps are finally at or below 90°F a good bit of the time. We keep getting teasers of autumn, but it'll be a week or two depending on where you live. The heat index in Houston looks to be 105°F today, so autumn is still a little ways off. Ouch.
The joke here is that, because Americans do not use the term "autumn" in normal communication, someone might be led to believe that it had a special unusual scientific meaning.