Other forms: harvesting, harvested, harvests
The harvest is the gathering in of ripe crops, and the time it happens. A good harvest, harvest festival, harvest the wheat.
It is the year's decisive moment, and the timing is a gamble — a week early costs yield and a week late can lose the crop to weather. A harvest moon is the full moon nearest the autumn equinox, which rises early and gives light for late work. Note that the Old English word meant autumn.
1nounharvestThe gathering in of ripe crops.
“The farmers worked from dawn to dusk to bring in the harvest before the rain.”
2verbgatherTo gather in a crop.
“The farmers harvest the grapes by hand in September.”
harvest is a gathering of crops.
Old English haerfest means autumn or harvest-time, from a Germanic root. Autumn later took over the season sense.
Proto-Indo-European
*kerp-
Proto-Germanic
*harbistaz — harvest-time, autumn, fall
Proto-West Germanic
*harbist
Old English
hærfest — autumn, harvest-time; August
Middle English
harvest
English, today
harvest
From Middle English harvest, hervest, from Old English hærfest (“autumn, harvest-time; August”), from Proto-West Germanic harbist, from Proto-Germanic harbistaz (“harvest-time, autumn, fall”), from harbaz, from Proto-Indo-European kerp-. 2 Cognate with Sylt frr Hārefst, West Frisian hjerst, Dutch herfst, German Herbst, dated German Low German Harvst, Danish - and Norwegian Bokmål høst, Norwegian Nynorsk haust; further with Latin carpere (“to seize”), Ancient Greek καρπός (“fruit”), κείρω (“to cut off”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA