Spring has sprung!

Sunday marked the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. The season's name comes from the same “spring” which is the source of a river. From this original meaning, “spring” took on the sense of a beginning: dawn was “dayspring”, and the season marking the start of new life was “the spring of the leaf” or “the spring of the year”, quickly shortened to simply “spring”. “Equinox” comes from the Latin equi- (equal) and nox (night), as day and night are of equal length all over the globe. German is even more charmingly analytical, calling this phenomenon “Day-and-night-the-same”!