【季節】霜降 The First Frost
【水曜：自然・季節】
今週の金曜日、10月23日は二十四節気のうち「霜降（そうこう）」、つまり初めて霜が降りる頃とされています。二十四節気では、これが秋の最後になります。
日本語では、霜が「降りる（おりる）」・「降る（ふる）」という表現をします。
昔は、寒い朝外を見ると地面が真っ白になっていたので、霜も雪や雨と同じように空から降ってくるものと考えられており、そのため霜も「降りる・降る」という言い方をするそうです。
最近の季節は暦より暖かいので、霜が降りるのは真冬にならないと見られませんが、朝晩、肌寒くなってきたのは事実です。昼間との温度差が激しいですね。
風邪をひかないように、皆さまどうぞお気をつけて。
いろは
Wednesday — Nature & the Seasons
This Friday, the 23rd of October, marks Sōkō (霜降) in the traditional calendar of 24 solar terms — the period when the first frost is said to fall. It is the final solar term of autumn.
In Japanese, frost is described with the verb oriru or furu — both of which mean to fall, or to come down from above. The same words are used for rain and snow.
The reason, it seems, is quite simple. In the old days, people would wake on a cold morning to find the ground completely white. With no other explanation, it must have seemed as though the frost had fallen from the sky overnight, just as rain and snow do. And so the language settled on that image, and it has stayed ever since.
These days, the seasons tend to run warmer than the old calendar expects, and true frost is rarely seen before the depths of winter. But the mornings and evenings have grown noticeably cool. The gap between midday warmth and the chill of early morning is quite something.
Please do take care not to catch a cold.
Iroha
