Winter
one of the Earth's four temperate seasons, occurring between autumn and spring; one of the 8 Sámi seasons
Winter is the coldest and darkest season of the year in temperate and polar climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring, when the hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun as a result of the tilt of Earth's axis. Different cultures define different dates as the start of winter, and some use a definition based on weather.
When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa. Winter typically brings precipitation that, depending on a region's climate, is mainly rain or snow. The moment of winter solstice is when the Sun's elevation with respect to the North or South Pole is at its most negative value; that is, the Sun is at its farthest below the horizon as measured from the pole. The day on which this occurs has the shortest day and the longest night, with day length increasing and night length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice.
The earliest sunset and latest sunrise dates outside the polar regions differ from the date of the winter solstice and depend on latitude; this is due to the variation in the solar day throughout the year caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit (see: earliest and latest sunrise and sunset).
Etymology
The English word winter comes from the Proto-Germanic noun *wintru-, whose origin is unclear. Several proposals exist, a commonly mentioned one connecting it to the Proto-Indo-European root *wed- 'water' or a nasal infix variant *wend-.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Winter” is one of the Earth's four temperate seasons, occurring between autumn and spring; one of the 8 Sámi seasons. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Winter, Earth's and four, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1311. The Library of Congress control number is sh85147029. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Winter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.