leap year
| 1. | (in the Gregorian calendar) a year that contains 366 days, with February 29 as an additional day: occurring in years whose last two digits are evenly divisible by four, except for centenary years not divisible by 400. |
| 2. | a year containing an extra day or extra month in any calendar. |
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source
| leap year n.
|
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Leap year
Leap" year`\ 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.Cite This Source
leap year
year containing some intercalary period, especially a Gregorian year having a 29th day of February instead of the standard 28 days. The astronomical year, the time taken for the Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun, is about 365.242 days, or, to a first approximation, 365.25 days. To account for the odd quarter day, an extra calendar day is added every four years, as was first done in 46 BC, with the establishment of the Julian calendar. Over many centuries, the difference between the approximate value 0.25 day and the more accurate 0.242 day accumulates significantly. In the Gregorian calendar now in general use, the discrepancy is adjusted by adding the extra day to only those century years exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000). For still more precise reckoning, every year evenly divisible by 4,000 (i.e., 16,000, 24,000, etc.) may be a common (not leap) year.
Learn more about leap year with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Cite This Source
Copyright © 2009, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
