秋

• Autumn: The literal season, often encompassing associated thematic tropes of harvest, cooling, and decline.
• Year: Metonymically denotes a full annual cycle, as the autumn harvest marked the conclusion of the agricultural year. This sense is most common when preceded by a numeral (e.g., 三秋).

• Temporal Noun: Indicates the time or season.
• Measure Word/Counter: Used to count years of duration or age.
• Implicit Action: In sparse contexts, may imply the harvest itself.

To distinguish between "season" and "year":

• Seasonal Sequence: When appearing alongside 春 (spring), 夏 (summer), or 冬 (winter), the meaning is strictly the season.
• Chronological Markers: Pairing with 歲 (year/age) or 年 (year) reinforces the sense of a calendar year.

• Fanqie reading: 七由.
• Variants: The glyph appears in several variant forms (including U+418B, U+79CC, U+9F9D, U+79CB, and U+97A6) reflecting different scribal traditions or eras; these do not alter the lexical meaning.

Distinguish between a specific seasonal setting (a snapshot in time) and a measure of elapsed duration (the passing of years).