What is "leap year"

Leap year \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 \Year\, n. [OE. yer, yeer, [yogh]er, AS. ge['a]r; akin to OFries. i?r, g?r, D. jaar, OHG. j[=a]r, G. jahr, Icel. [=a]r, Dan. aar, Sw. [*a]r, Goth. j?r, Gr. ? a season of the year, springtime, a part of the day, an hour, ? a year, Zend y[=a]re year. [root]4, 279. Cf. Hour, Yore.]

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.
   --Chaucer.

   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 175

2. 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.
   --Shak.

   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.
   --Abbott.

   Year of grace, any year of the Christian era; Anno Domini; A. D. or a. d.

late 14c., from leap (v.) + year. So called from its causing fixed festival days, which normally advance one weekday per year, to "leap" ahead one day in the week.

n. 1 In the Gregorian calendar, a year having 366 days instead of the usual 365, with the extra day added to compensate for the fact that the Earth rotates approximately 365.25 times for each revolution it makes around the Sun. 2 In the Jewish calendar or other lunisolar calendars, a year having 13 months instead of 12, with the extra month added because 19 solar years is approximately 19*12+7 lunar months.

n. in the Gregorian calendar: any year divisible by 4 except centenary years not divisible by 400 [syn: intercalary year, 366 days, bissextile year]

Leap Year is a 1924 American comedy film directed by and starring Roscoe Arbuckle. The film was not released in the United States in 1921, due to Arbuckle's involvement in the Virginia Rappe death scandal. The film finally saw an American release of sorts in 1981. Prints held by UCLA and by the Library of Congress.

A leap year is a year with an extra day. Leap year may also refer to:

• Leap Year (1924 film) – American film
• Leap Year (1932 film) – British film
• Leap Year (2010 film) – American film
• Leap Years – a 2001 drama television series
• The Leap Years – 2008 Singaporean film, aka Leap of Love
• Año bisiesto (Leap Year) - a Mexican film directed by Michael Rowe that won the 2010 Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival

Leap Year is a 1932 British comedy film directed by Tom Walls, who co-stars with Anne Grey, Edmund Breon and Ellis Jeffreys. It was written by A.R. Rawlinson, and produced by Herbert Wilcox. The film was re-released in 1937.

A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or a bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting (also called intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.

For example, in the Gregorian calendar, each leap year has 366 days instead of the usual 365, by extending February to 29 days rather than the common 28. Similarly, in the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, Adar Aleph, a 13th lunar month, is added seven times every 19 years to the twelve lunar months in its common years to keep its calendar year from drifting through the seasons. In the Baha'i Calendar, a leap day is added when needed to ensure that the following year begins on the vernal equinox.

The name "leap year" probably comes from the fact that while a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next, the day of the week in the 12 months following the leap day (from March 1 through February 28 of the following year) will advance two days due to the extra day (thus "leaping over" one of the days in the week). For example, Christmas Day fell on a Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, and Thursday in 2003 but then "leapt" over Friday to fall on a Saturday in 2004.

The length of a day is also occasionally changed by the insertion of leap seconds into Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), owing to the variability of Earth's rotational period. Unlike leap days, leap seconds are not introduced on a regular schedule, since the variability in the length of the day is not entirely predictable.

Leap Year is a 2010 American romantic comedy film directed by Anand Tucker, and starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. Written by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, the film is about a woman who heads to Ireland to ask her boyfriend to accept her wedding proposal on leap day, when tradition supposedly holds that men cannot refuse a woman's proposal for marriage. Her plans are interrupted by a series of increasingly unlikely events and are further complicated when she hires a handsome Irish innkeeper to take her to her boyfriend in Dublin. The film was shot in County Wicklow, Dublin, County Mayo, and County Galway, with filming taking place in and around the Aran Islands, Connemara, Temple Bar, Georgian Dublin, Wicklow National Park, and Olaf Street, Waterford. Leap Year premiered in New York City on January 6, 2010. The film received mostly negative reviews.