Winter is an old word. As in, oooooolllllld. As old as English itself–coming unchanged to us from Old English. And it has always meant “the coldest season of the year” and “the fourth season of the year.”
But where did it come from?
As with most words this old, etymologists can’t trace it definitely. But they can make some good guesses based on other languages and their similar words. In this case, other Germanic languages have the most similar examples, and they seem to be linked to the Old Norse vetr (pronounced very similar to winter), which means “wet.” But it also seems similar to Gaulish vindo and Old Irish find, which both mean “white.” Either way, winter is clearly the season of wet and cold and snow.
Did you know that Anglo-Saxons counted years in “winters”? Yep! They even had the word anwinter for things that were one year old or a yearling (think horses etc).
Winter has been a verb (to winter somewhere) since the 1300s, and winterize (prepare for winter) came about with the advent of automobiles in the 1910s.
What is winter like where you live? Here in the mountains of West Viginia and Western Maryland, our winters are usually gray, wet, muddy, and chilly; we get a few snowfalls every year, but mostly our winter is just dreary.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.