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Leap year   /lip jɪr/   Listen
noun
Leap year  n.  Bissextile; a year containing 366 days; every fourth year which leaps over a day more than a common year, giving to February twenty-nine days. See Bissextile. Note: Every year whose number is divisible by four without a remainder is a leap year, excepting the full centuries, which, to be leap years, must be divisible by 400 without a remainder. If not so divisible they are common years. 1900, therefore, is not a leap year, but 2000 is.



Year  n.  
1.
The time of the apparent revolution of the sun trough the ecliptic; the period occupied by the earth in making its revolution around the sun, called the astronomical year; also, a period more or less nearly agreeing with this, adopted by various nations as a measure of time, and called the civil year; as, the common lunar year of 354 days, still in use among the Mohammedans; the year of 360 days, etc. In common usage, the year consists of 365 days, and every fourth year (called bissextile, or leap year) of 366 days, a day being added to February on that year, on account of the excess above 365 days (see Bissextile). "Of twenty year of age he was, I guess." Note: The civil, or legal, year, in England, formerly commenced on the 25th of March. This practice continued throughout the British dominions till the year 1752.
2.
The time in which any planet completes a revolution about the sun; as, the year of Jupiter or of Saturn.
3.
pl. Age, or old age; as, a man in years.
Anomalistic year, the time of the earth's revolution from perihelion to perihelion again, which is 365 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 48 seconds.
A year's mind (Eccl.), a commemoration of a deceased person, as by a Mass, a year after his death. Cf. A month's mind, under Month.
Bissextile year. See Bissextile.
Canicular year. See under Canicular.
Civil year, the year adopted by any nation for the computation of time.
Common lunar year, the period of 12 lunar months, or 354 days.
Common year, each year of 365 days, as distinguished from leap year.
Embolismic year, or Intercalary lunar year, the period of 13 lunar months, or 384 days.
Fiscal year (Com.), the year by which accounts are reckoned, or the year between one annual time of settlement, or balancing of accounts, and another.
Great year. See Platonic year, under Platonic.
Gregorian year, Julian year. See under Gregorian, and Julian.
Leap year. See Leap year, in the Vocabulary.
Lunar astronomical year, the period of 12 lunar synodical months, or 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 36 seconds.
Lunisolar year. See under Lunisolar.
Periodical year. See Anomalistic year, above.
Platonic year, Sabbatical year. See under Platonic, and Sabbatical.
Sidereal year, the time in which the sun, departing from any fixed star, returns to the same. This is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.3 seconds.
Tropical year. See under Tropical.
Year and a day (O. Eng. Law), a time to be allowed for an act or an event, in order that an entire year might be secured beyond all question.
Year of grace, any year of the Christian era; Anno Domini; A. D. or a. d.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leap year" Quotes from Famous Books



... metric system of weights and measures, and to the disappearance of the various makeshift calendars that had hitherto confused chronology. The year was divided into thirteen months of four weeks each, and New Year's Day and Leap Year's Day were made holidays, and did not count at all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was decided to 'nail down Easter.' . . . In ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... the experiment. Leaving the surgeon to caution Mrs. Fairbank on the subject of Leap Year, I went to the stables to see ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... On Leap Year day, February 29, we held a special celebration, more to cheer the men up than for anything else. Some of the cynics of the party held that it was to celebrate their escape from woman's wiles for another four years. The last of our cocoa was used to-day. Henceforth water, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... in no way confused with the Devenish-Dawnays of Chipping-Banbury or the Devenishe d'Awnay-Dawnays of Upper Tooting; the Dorset branch alone possessing the privilege, granted by letters patent of ETHELRED the Unready, of drinking the King's bathwater every Maunday Tuesday of Leap Year). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... father gravely, "are you under the impression that this is Leap Year? You seem to be very attentive to ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... fool. We are told that out of nothing God made the Heavens and the earth; but out of nothing God never did and man never can, make a public sense of honor and a public conscience. Miracles are now performed but one day of the year—the twenty-ninth of February; and on leap year God is forbidden ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... yeare. F. G. Fleay (Biog. Chron. I, 59) considers that this refers "to the date of production, as Bussy's introduction at Court was in 1569, not a Leap Year," and that it "fixes the time of representation to ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... one girl, nor both; nor were all the forty-six names chosen sufficient; for the beggar woman's wish had come true, in a way not expected. There were as many as, and no fewer children than, there were days in the year; and, since this was leap year, there were three hundred and sixty-six little folks in the house; so that other names, besides the ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... that it was leap year, and invited Menlo to dance at her house one Saturday night and take all advantage of its privileges. Mrs. Yorba consented that Magdalena should have a new frock, the organdie being in a condition for a maid to sniff at. Magdalena asserted ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... sharp-sighted, and strong-willed. To be sure, he could not very well refuse; but this very fact should have weighed additionally, with a girl of Claire's supposed temperament, in deciding her not to make a special Leap Year for the occasion. To hand yourself over to Dick because Tom has declined to have anything to do with you is no doubt not a very unusual proceeding: but it is not usually done quite so much coram populo, or with such acknowledgment of its being done to spite Tom ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury



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