seison

Old French seison comes from Latin satiōnem (a sowing), from serere (to sow). A season was originally the time to plant. The word entered English in the fourteenth century and gradually expanded to mean any division of the year. The four-season model (spring, summer, autumn, winter) is a European cultural convention, not a universal truth — many cultures divide the year differently. Hindi has six seasons (ṛitū). Aboriginal Australian calendars recognize up to seven. The Arctic has two: light and dark.

The Latin sowing-time became the English word for everything that happens in time. A 'television season' is a batch of episodes. A 'seasoned' professional has survived many cycles. 'Season tickets' grant access for a fixed period. 'Seasoning' (adding spice to food) comes from the same word — originally, seasoning meant preparing food at the right time, when ingredients were in season. The temporal meaning generated the culinary meaning.

Antonio Vivaldi's Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons, 1725) is the most recorded classical composition in history. Each of the four violin concertos depicts a season through tempo, texture, and dynamics: birdsong in Spring, thunderstorms in Summer, harvest dances in Autumn, chattering teeth in Winter. Vivaldi wrote sonnets describing each season and printed them alongside the score. The composer who named his most famous work after the Latin sowing-time was also a priest.

The four seasons are caused by Earth's 23.4-degree axial tilt, not by the planet's distance from the sun. Earth is actually closest to the sun in January (perihelion) and farthest in July (aphelion). The seasons reverse in the Southern Hemisphere. An Australian in December and a Canadian in December experience opposite seasons from the same cause. The Latin sowing-time was an observation about agriculture. The astronomical explanation came much later.