Year "year", originally 秂, an ideographic compound of a person carrying a bundle of wheat denoting "harvest". Slavic besides "godŭ" "time period; year" uses "lěto" "summer; year". In the International System of Quantities (ISO 80000-3), the year (symbol, "a") is defined as either 365 days or 366 days. No astronomical year has an integer number of days or lunar months, so any calendar that follows an astronomical year must have a system of intercalation such as leap years. In the Julian calendar, the average (mean) length of a year is 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in
Leap year Leap year A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting (also called "intercalating") an additional day or month into the year, the drift can