blackberry winter / Indian summer

[Susan Burt]

Margaret Mead used the term "Blackberry Winter" as the title of her
autobiography--I always wondered where the term came from!

Susan

On Apr 9, 2007, at 3:11 PM, Charles Doyle wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      blackberry winter / Indian summer
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>
> 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
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