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 day "every" four years amounts to about three extra days. The Gregorian calendar therefore drops three leap days every 400 years, which is the length of its "leap cycle". This is done by dropping February 29 in the three century years (multiples of 100) that cannot be exactly divided by 400. The years 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200 and 2300 are common years. By this rule, the average number of days per year is 365 + − + = 365.2425. The rule can be applied to years before the Gregorian reform