Saisons

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The periods of the year defined by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, commonly referred to as seasons
2. The distinct phases characterized by specific climatic conditions and natural phenomena throughout the year
3. The divisions of the year that mark variations in temperature, precipitation, and ecology across different regions

Etymology: "Saisons" is simply the plural of "saison," the French noun for the season of the year. Its English counterpart "season" is a doublet: the two words descend from the same ancestor but arrived in English by different routes, one through the Old French of the Norman period and the other later as a direct borrowing from French. The shared ancestor is the Latin "satio," meaning a sowing or planting, which grew into a sense of the time when sowing happened. That agricultural link is why the word originally pointed to a fitting or appointed time, the moment when something was right to do, before it narrowed to the four divisions of the year. Mixing the two paths is the surprise here: an English speaker who knows "season" and meets "saison" in a French text is looking at one word that has taken two different journeys into the language.

Synonyms: seasons