Turn! Turn! Turn!

Pete Seeger was on to something when he tacked his famous line to the poem from Ecclesiastes. "To everything there is a season" is how chapter three of the King James Version starts, and it goes on to talk about birth and death, love and hate, and peace and war. If King Solomon was the author of those lines, then he managed to pen a number one pop hit (via the Byrds)! Not bad, eh? Today the autumnal equinox marks the start of fall in the northern hemisphere. Even the redoubtable Eric Partridge (WordMan™'s hero) admits that the Latin autumnus--the adjectival form being autumnalis--is "of obscure origin." He suggests it might have come from uertere (later vertere), the verb meaning, naturally, "to turn." Here in the State of Jefferson the 40 ºF mornings are evidence enough that we are turning from the warmth of summer to the cool of autumn.