"leap year" - Word of the Day from the OED

[Dave Monroe]

OED Online Word of the Day

leap year SECOND EDITION 1989

[Late ME., f. LEAP n.1; prob. of much older formation, as the ON.
hlaup-ár is presumably, like other terms of the Roman calendar,
imitated from Eng.

  The name may refer to the fact that in the bissextile year any fixed
festival after Feb. falls on the next week-day but one to that on
which it fell in the preceding year, not on the next week-day as
usual. Cf. med.L. saltus lunæ (OE. mónan hlýp), the omission of a day
in the reckoning of the lunar month, made every nineteen years to
bring the calendar into accord with the astronomical phenomena.]

    A year having one day (now Feb. 29) more than the common year; a
bissextile year. to make leap year of: (fig.) to pass over.
1387 TREVISA Higden (Rolls) IV. 199 at tyme Iulius amended e kalender,
and fonde e cause of the lepe ere [L. rationem bisexti invenit]. 1481
CAXTON Myrr. II. xxxi. 127 Bysexte or lepe yere, whiche in iiij yere
falleth ones. 1562 J. HEYWOOD Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 207 The next leape
yere after wedding was first made. 1606 W. BIRNIE Kirk-Buriall (1833)
38 In civil entries to heritage, if it be for the better, men can make
leap-yeare of their father and seeke farther uppe. 1704 HEARNE Duct.
Hist. (1714) I. 3 That Year was called the Bissextile; and by us
Leap-Year because one day of the Week is leaped over in the
Observation of the Festivals. 1834 Nat. Philos., Astron. i. 44/1
(U.K.S.) The years 1600, 2000, 2400, would be leap years.

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