harvest

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The crops that are gathered in, or the amount gathered.

   This year's wheat harvest was the largest in a decade.

2. 2
   noun

   The time or activity of gathering ripe crops.

   The whole village helps with the harvest every autumn.

3. 3
   verb

   To gather a crop from the fields.

   We harvested the apples in September.

4. 4
   noun

   The result or reward of an effort or action.

   Years of hard work finally produced a rich harvest of success.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Harvest meant “autumn” in Old English. Because early autumn was the time for gathering ripe crops, it came during the Middle Ages to mean both the gathering process and the resulting crop; the word has ancient relatives in Latin carpere, “to pluck,” and Greek karpos, “fruit.”

From Middle English harvest, hervest, from Old English hærfest (“autumn, harvest-time; August”), from Proto-West Germanic *harbist, from Proto-Germanic *harbistaz (“harvest-time, autumn, fall”), from *harbaz, from Proto-Indo-European *kerp-. Cognates Cognate with Sylt North Frisian Hārefst, West Frisian hjerst, Dutch herfst, German Herbst, dated German Low German Harvst, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål høst, Norwegian Nynorsk haust; further with Latin carpere (“to seize”), Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit”), κείρω (keírō, “to cut off”).

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary