The Collaborative International Dictionary
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.]
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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. The time in which any planet completes a revolution about the sun; as, the year of Jupiter or of Saturn.
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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.
WordNet
n. any year of the Christian era
Usage examples of "year of grace".
Dowie, a Scottish Baptist preacher, whose weekly 'Leaves of Healing' were in the year of grace 1900 in their sixth volume, and who, although he denounces the cures wrought in other sects as 'diabolical counterfeits' of his own exclusively 'Divine Healing,' must on the whole be counted into the mind-cure movement.
Signed, sealed and witnessed in the city of Illian on the twelfth day of Saven, this Year of Grace.
Even in this year of grace you had only a sixty-forty chance of proving who your father was on such slender evidence, let alone of tracking back into the Caucasian side of what was predominantly an Afram heredity.
I thought, I'm just the same as one of those old seamen feeling his way down the same unmapped, uncharted coast ot South West Africa south of Angola, the only difference being that I'm using an echo-sounder in this year of grace 1959 instead of a lead-line, as in the year of Our Lord 1486.
Three months of the precious year of grace had elapsed, and it was the beginning of April when the advertisement appeared.