summer

The word “summer” means the warmest season of the year, between spring and autumn. In plain terms, the hot season, or a metaphor for someone's best years.

“Summer” is pronounced SUH-muh (/ˈsʌmɚ/ in IPA).

Here is “summer” used in a sentence: “We spent last summer travelling around Portugal.”

The opposite of “summer” — its antonyms — is winter.

Depending on how it is used, “summer” can be a noun and a verb.

The word “summer” comes from Old English. From Old English sumor, going back through Proto-Germanic to a very old Indo-European root for "summer" — related to similar-sounding words across most Germanic languages.

“Summer” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

“Summer” has 3 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: the warmest season of the year, between spring and autumn.

It depends on the hemisphere and the definition. In the Northern Hemisphere, meteorological summer runs June to August; in the Southern Hemisphere it's December to February. Astronomical summer starts at the June or December solstice and ends at the equinox, so the exact dates shift slightly each year.

Summer is warmest because that hemisphere tilts toward the Sun, so sunlight strikes more directly and days grow longer. The concentrated rays and extended daylight give the ground and air more time to heat up. It's the tilt of Earth's axis, not distance from the Sun, that drives the warmth.

Because Earth's axis is tilted, the two hemispheres lean toward the Sun at opposite times of year. When the Northern Hemisphere tilts sunward and enjoys summer, the Southern Hemisphere tilts away into winter, and six months later the situation reverses. The seasons are therefore always opposite across the equator.

That depends on which calendar you follow. Astronomically, summer begins at the solstice — around 21 June in the north and 21 December in the south — the longest day of the year. Meteorologically, it starts on the first of June or December, giving neat three-month seasons for record-keeping.