In case you haven’t noticed yet, this February has 29 days, in other words, it’s a leap year. Leap years, of course, occur every 4th year to compensate for the six additional hours of the solar year versus the 365-day calendar year. In English, most people use the phrase ‘leap year,’ but you might also have heard it referred to as a ‘bissextile year.’ Below are the words for leap year in 10 different languages:
| Language | Leap Year | Transliteration |
| Arabic | سنة كبيسة | sana kabiisa |
| Irish | bliain bhisigh | |
| Italian | anno bisestile | |
| Japanese | うるう年 | uruudoshi |
| Spanish | año bisiesto | |
| Korean | 윤년 | yoon nyeon |
| Russian | високосный год | vee-so-KOS-nyi god |
| French | une année bissextile | |
| Chinese | 闰年 | rùnnián |
As you can see, words derived from the latin bis (twice) sextus (sixth) are used in several languages other than English. Why is that? Well, with the introduction of the Julian calendar in 46 BCE, a day was intercalated after February 24th, the sixth day before the calends, or the 1st of March, and so it was called (in Latin, of course) the bissextus or second sixth day. For convenience, the day was later moved to the end of the month, but the name stayed.