Meaning of Indian summer | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A stretch of sunny and warm, often hazy, days during late autumn.
   offensive, possibly
2. The late autumn of life; a late flowering of activity before old age.
   figuratively
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see Indian, summer.

Equivalents

Examples

“Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer.”

“And while the bards, before my fancy bring / The Indian ſummer, and Italian ſpring, / Rapt let me mark the different climates found, / In Temple's gardens, and his lawns around.”

“The gentlemen were still lounging on the gallery, fighting time with newspapers and cigars, for the Indian Summer kept up a charming pretense that Winter had forgotten to cross the water; […]”

“There is sunshine in the face of all—a kind of Indian summer sunshine, infused with the sadness of a coming winter; and theirs is the winter of parting.”

“Truth be told, I enjoyed the earthquake of '89; […] It was a warm night, Indian summer. The whole city seemed to be out of doors. It was like an enormous block party, all the neighbors sitting on their stoops, drinking beer, listening to their radios.”

“Thus, while at times before our eye / The clouds about the present part, / And, smiling through them, round us lie / Soft hues of Memory's evening sky – / The Indian summer of the heart, / In secret sympathies of mind, / In founts of feeling which retain / Their pure fresh flow, we yet may find / Our early dreams not wholly vain!”

“We may come to look back on the Sixties as the Indian summer of the Western imagination, of the last aristocrats of Western taste. Beginning with [John F.] Kennedy, the era ends with [Richard] Nixon and Joe Frazier, his hatchet-man … Cavaliers had better beware. The Roundheads are back in force.”

“Instead of focusing on winning the next election for her husband, Nancy Reagan can turn to the broader mission of helping others. She is laying down her own legacy next to her husband's. This kind of activism is often the hallmark of people in their Indian summer season. Their energy is fueled by a sense of urgency that is lacking in youth.”

“Here, in what she had begun to think of as the Indian summer of her life, she was claiming a future that held infinite and delicious possibilities; and she would spend the coming years with someone who would bring all the seasons alive.”

CEFR level