A Russian visitor remarked on the unusually warm weather of the last couple days and I told him it was called Indian summer (I may be jumping the gun on this, but we have had a couple weeks of fall weather). He explained the Russian word for it (involving a story) and then asked me if the same phrase was used in England. I said I doubted it, but I would try to find out. Which is what this post is about. So what is a spell of summer weather in the middle of fall (or autumn as they call it elsewhere) called in England? Australia? Other English speaking places?
Can’t help you in this regard, but there is an analogous phrase for a spell of cold weather in May. It’s called “Blackberry Winter.”
Just about the time blackberries are in bloom, a cold snap sometimes settles in, possibly with snow. The snowflakes are likened to the white blossoms present on the blackberries at that time.
BTW, I wonder what Native Americans think of the phrase,
“Indian Summer.”
Where is this phrase “Blackberry winter” used? Not in cheesesteak city where I (mis)spent the first 26 years of my life.
I cannot see that “Indian summer” has any negative connotations, although I would be interested to know whence it arose. My folk etymological guess is that there was nothing like it in England. Not surprising since they often don’t have much of a summer there either. So they called it Indian summer since they would have attributed any new experience (like Indian corn) to the Indians. Of course, native-Americans don’t much care for “Indian” either, but that is a different matter.
We do get Indian summers here in the UK, typically in October … and yes, we call them “Indian summers”. 
Julie
Ok, is it still PC to say “Indian Summer”? Do we have to call it Native American summer, now? (Technically, Indian Summer doesn’t start until after the Autumnal Equinox.) And, what did the Native Americans call it? Maybe just “unseasonably mild”? 
- Jinx
Since it is still Summer I fail to see how you could even think of calling it “Indian SUmmer” which AFAIK is the warm spell we get in the fall. So you should have told him that it was called Summer.
AFAIK Indian Summer is summer-like conditions that occurs after the first frost. I do not know the origins, but I always likened it to something like “Indian giving”.
Not true, although white people will bend backwards to sound politically correct about this. Indian is the most common word used by Native Americans when referring to themselves in general, not Native American.
Wordorigins.org has a good overview of the possible etymology of Indian summer.
In Poland it’s called babskie lato. Lato means summer, and babskie is the posessive form of “broad” or “old lady”.
The Master made a passing reference to “Indian Summer” having the meaning “false Summer” in his column What’s the origin of the expression “Indian giver”?
The Random House Word Maven gives several different (and, of course, contradictory) origins of the phrase in Indian Summer, (specifically tracing the notion of Indian=false to speculation by H. L. Mencken). Interestingly, he notes that the phrase Indian Summer actually replaced several phrases apparently describing the same phenomenon in Britain, including St. Luke’s little summer, St. Martin’s summer, and All Hallows summer. *
The Word Detective has a piece on Indian Summer that is quite a bit shorter than that of the Word Maven, although he tends to give less credit to the notion of Indian=false in the name.
Well, if you believe that the meaning is taken from an insult to the indigenous peoples of North America, you should probably not use either phrase. If you believe that it is either neutral or complimentary, then Indian Summer is fine, inasmuch as “Native American” is not a term that arose among those people, many, if not most, of whom continue to use Indian themselves.
- [ small hijack ] I found the several speculations in the Word Maven** regarding the “smoke” to be odd, since I have always thought that “smoky” simply referred to the frequent haze that occurs at that time (at least in my experience in Michigan and Ohio). On the other hand, I do recall reading that modern ecological and environmental scientists have seriously underestimated the amount of burning off of underbrush that the Indians practiced throughout the Eastern forests before the hand was logged off for farms by the Europans. [ /hijack ]
FWIW, here is the definition of Indian Summer as taught years ago:
Indian Summer is a period of unseasonable warm weather which must occur after the first hard freeze after the autumnal equinox.
So in the northern hemisphere, Indian Summer cannot occur until after September 20/21, and after the first hard freeze.
In all my years in Australia we never had any hard freeze occuring after March 20/21. Does this me, by definition, the weather phenomenon cannot actually occur Down Under? Tazzie perhaps?
Walloon is correct- they have no problem w/Indian. Not at all like colored or Negro. In warmer climes in the US-Fla, Ariz, Cal-there is no Indian summer. Just "unseasonable’ or “heatwave”
Because of Santa Ana winds any day could be in the 90’s in SoCal.
I believe the expression "St Martin’s Summer is also used in French and Spanish so I tend to believe it is because of the date and not because of the location of the church mentioned.
This page in Spanish says the “Veranillo de San Martin” (Veranillo is diminutive for summer) is a spell of unseasonably warm weather which happens regularly in Europe at the end of October and early November when the high pressure center over the Azores Islands moves over to Central Europe. It gives some more meteorological explanation which I do not quite understand.