![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bissextile
Sep. 12th, 2007 07:25 ambissextile - adj., of or relating to a leap year or the extra day of a leap year.
Those of you with a little Latin are probably squinting at that and wondering what "twice sixth" has to do with anything -- and that's a long story. Back when the Roman calendar was lunisolar and used a leap month, it was inserted between after what we call 24 February and 25 February and what they called "after the sixth day before the calends of March" (the calends being the first of the month). Yes, the 24th is the sixth day before, because the Romans counted inclusively starting with the calends itself. When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar to make it a purely solar year, his system had a single leap day every four years -- which was nominally in the same place as the old leap month. Thus, there were two sixth-before-calends-of-March days, which was later shortened to two sixths -- bissextile. When people started counting dates after the month's start, instead of before set intervals, the leap day notionally shifted to the end of the month -- but still retained the name.
How's that for an extended derivation?
---L.
Those of you with a little Latin are probably squinting at that and wondering what "twice sixth" has to do with anything -- and that's a long story. Back when the Roman calendar was lunisolar and used a leap month, it was inserted between after what we call 24 February and 25 February and what they called "after the sixth day before the calends of March" (the calends being the first of the month). Yes, the 24th is the sixth day before, because the Romans counted inclusively starting with the calends itself. When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar to make it a purely solar year, his system had a single leap day every four years -- which was nominally in the same place as the old leap month. Thus, there were two sixth-before-calends-of-March days, which was later shortened to two sixths -- bissextile. When people started counting dates after the month's start, instead of before set intervals, the leap day notionally shifted to the end of the month -- but still retained the name.
How's that for an extended derivation?
---L.
