blackberry winter / Indian summer

[Charles Doyle]

Like much of the country, Georgia has been having unconscionably cold weather, in reference to which I used the term "blackberry winter" in class today ('late cold spell'). Of my 35 students, only one registered familiarity with the term, which I have heard and used all my life; DARE labels it "chiefly Sth, S Midl." Some of my students confessed that when they heard the word "blackberry," they thought not even of the plant or the berry but only of the hand-held communication gadget!

Blackberry winter is the counterpart of Indian summer ('unseasonable spell of warm weather in late autumn'), for which term the OED says, "A period of calm, dry, mild weather, with hazy atmosphere, occurring in the late autumn in the Northern United States. Also transf. in other countries." The reference to "the Northern United States" strikes me as too narrow (except in the sense that ANY word is "transferred" from the site of its coining to other places where the language is spoken!). Curiously, perhaps, DARE does include the term but without any clear reference to regional limitation or distribution.

--Charlie
___________________________________________________________

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org