leap year
/ˈliːp ˌjɪə/
"leap-year" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“leap year” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A year in the Julian or Gregorian calendar with an intercalary day added to February (in the Gregorian calendar, February 29), used to adjust for the extra hours of the solar year; a 366-day year.
Corpus desk
Index EN-leap-year · leap year · English
leap year · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "L" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | leap year |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈliːp ˌjɪə/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “leap year” in English
Rare enough to double-check
leap year is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈliːp ˌjɪə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for leap year, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *yóh₁r̥ From Late Middle English lepe-yer, lep-yer (“year with 366 days, leap year”), from lep, lepe (“act of jumping, jump, leap”) (from Old English hlīep, hlȳp, probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *klewp- (“to spring; to stumble”)) + ye… The correct English form is leap year, spelled L-E-A-P- -Y-E-A-R.
Definition
- 1A year in the Julian or Gregorian calendar with an intercalary day added to February (in the Gregorian calendar, February 29), used to adjust for the extra hours of the solar year; a 366-day year.
- 2Any other year featuring intercalation, such as a year in a lunisolar calendar with 13 months instead of 12, used to maintain its alignment with the seasons of the solar year.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how leap year appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The additional day which occurred every fourth year [after the Julian Reform] was given to February, as being the shortest month, and was inserted in the calendar between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth day. February having then twenty-nine days, the twenty-fifth was the sixth of the calends of March, sexto calendas; the preceding, which was the additi…
Etymology
PIE word *yóh₁r̥ From Late Middle English lepe-yer, lep-yer (“year with 366 days, leap year”), from lep, lepe (“act of jumping, jump, leap”) (from Old English hlīep, hlȳp, probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *klewp- (“to spring; to stumble”)) + yer (“calendrical unit based on a complete revolution of the Earth around the Sun, year”) (from Old English ġēar, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *yóh₁r̥ (“year”)). The English term is analysable as leap (noun) + year, and possibly relates to the phenomenon that any fixed date of a 365-day calendar advances one weekday each year but every date of a 366-day year after February 29 (often seen as the leap day) advances by two weekdays instead. For example, Christmas (December 25) fell on a Saturday in 2004, a Sunday in 2005, a Monday in 2006, and a Tuesday in 2007 but then “leapt” over Wednesday to fall on a Thursday in 2008 which was a leap year. Compare also Old English mōnan hlȳp (“moon’s leap”) and Medieval Latin saltus lūnae (literally “leap moon”), an additional day added every 19 years (a Metonic cycle) to bring the lunar and solar calendars into alignment. Cognates * Old Norse hlaup-ár (“leap year”)
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.