What is winter?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/18/2010 09:35 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> > And how far back does "X has two seasons, winter and road construction" go?
>
>Don't know about that variant, but similar things (I myself
>had first heard "winter and July," where X = Ithaca) go back a
>fairly long way:

Jesse should be grateful he didn't live in (go to school in?)
Buffalo, where the seasons are probably more like Bill Palmer's Newport.

In northern Australia, there are two seasons, wet and dry.  That
saying must go back 60,000 to 100,000 years ago (if I remember what I
read recently), when the first humans crossed from the Asian mainland.

Joel

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