Difference autumn vs fall8/17/2023 At times when one could choose freely between them, a US speaker is more likely to use semester while a UK speaker to use term. Since they aren't perfect synonyms, there are times when precision leads to US speakers using term or UK speakers using semester or trimester as appropriate. In the last few decades though, many UK & Irish colleges introduced a policy of semesterisation (such a cumbersome word to put on posters at Student Union protests, but put it on, we did) and now have semesters while some US colleges have three-term or three-terms-with-supplementary-summer-term systems. Not long ago you could be pretty confident that a given US college or university would use semesters and a given UK or Irish one would use trimesters. To add confusion, if you have three normal terms, but also offer supplementary classes over the summer, then the terms can be referred to both as trimesters (taking the name from the three only) and as quarters (taking the name from all four). Term applies to any part the academic year is broken into, while semester strictly applies only to a bipartite system, with trimester (yes, the same as pregnant ladies have) for a tripartite and quadmester or quarter for a quadripartite system (such as Australian schools have). Term and semester are not strict synonyms. Fall and autumn are famous differences between British and American use, both recognised in all forms of English, but fall almost never actually used in Britain and Ireland and rarely in Australia or New Zealand, autumn almost never used in America, and Canada using both.
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