Fall

How to spell fall

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fall

What does fall mean?

1. verbTo move downward, typically rapidly and without control, under the force of gravity.
2. nounAn act or instance of dropping, descending, or collapsing.
3. nounAutumn, the season between summer and winter, chiefly in North American usage.

Fall in a sentence

• verb

  Loose tiles can fall from the roof during a storm.

• noun

  The sudden fall in temperature surprised the campers.

• noun

  The leaves turn brilliant orange every fall in New England.

• verb

  Prices tend to fall when demand drops sharply.

• noun

  She broke her wrist in a nasty fall on the icy path.

• noun

  They always plant the bulbs in the fall so they bloom in spring.

Where does fall come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Fall comes straight from the Old English verb feallan, which meant to drop down, to fail, or to die, and it is one of the oldest layers of native English vocabulary rather than a borrowing. It belongs to a wide family of Germanic relatives, including the Old Norse falla and the German fallen, all tracing back to a shared ancestral root meaning to drop or come down. The noun sense, an act of falling, grew naturally from the verb over the medieval period. The seasonal meaning, autumn, is a charming English invention: it began in the 1500s as a shortening of the phrase the fall of the leaf, describing the time of year when leaves drop. Although both Britain and America once used fall for the season, it survives chiefly in North American usage today while British English settled on autumn. Because the word is short and entirely phonetic, the only real spelling point is the doubled l at the end.

How the word is built

• fall (from Old English feallan: to drop, descend); a single root word with no prefix or suffix