Harvest: words for the season of gathering

This field, cut and stubbled at the end of summer, holds the image behind one of the oldest words in English. For centuries, people called the whole season of August to October ‘harvest’. The word comes from Old English ‘hærfest’, linked to German ‘Herbst’ and Dutch ‘herfst’, and further back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to pluck, gather’.

Across Europe the story branches. In Icelandic and Faroese the word is still ‘uppskera’, literally ‘up-cutting’, while Danish has ‘høst’ and Swedish ‘skörd’. Romance languages use forms from Latin verbs for gathering — French ‘récolte’, Italian ‘raccolto’, Spanish ‘cosecha’. The Celtic tongues keep the dual meaning: Irish ‘fómhar’ and Welsh ‘cynhaeaf’ still mean both ‘harvest’ and ‘autumn’. Greek offers ‘therismós’, a reminder that the season was once defined by reaping.

The word narrowed over time in English, but it has never lost its ties to the land. It still names festivals, hymns, and the act itself — visible in every field like this one after the cut.