Word.ws English Dictionary

bissextile

/bɪˈsɛkstɪl//bɪˈsɛks.taɪəl/

bissextile adjective: being or having an intercalary day, particularly the quadrennial leap day of the Julian and Gregorian calendars traditionally placed as a "second sixth" day before March 1st.

Adjective

bissextile (not comparable)

  1. Being or having an intercalary day, particularly the quadrennial leap day of the Julian and Gregorian calendars traditionally placed as a "second sixth" day before March 1st.
    • 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 24th and 25th day. February having then twenty-nine days, the 25th was the 6th of the calends of March, sexto calendas; the...1878, W.S.B. Woolhouse & al., "Calendar" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. IV, p. 666–7

Noun

bissextile (plural bissextiles)

  1. Synonym of leap year: a year with an intercalary day.
    Synonyms:
    leap year

bissextile meaning in Tamil and Persian

bissextile in Tamil

நாள் மிக்க ஆண்டு, நாள் மிகையான

bissextile in Persian

having an extra day
کبیسه kabise, اندرهلی andarheli

Synonyms of bissextile

Forms of bissextile

pluralbissextiles

Origin of bissextile

From Latin bisextilis/bissextilis (annus) (“bissextile year”), from bisextus + -ilis, from bis- (“two; twice; doubled”) + sextus (“sixth”) + dies (“day”), from the Julian calendar's original reckoning of its quadrennial intercalary day as a 48-hour February 24, subsequently distinguished as the two separate days of the sixth day before the March calends (ante diem sextum Kalendas Martias) and the "doubled sixth day". (February 24 is now normally understood as five days before the first of March, but was called the sixth by the Romans owing to their inclusive counting of dates. See Roman calendar on Wikipedia.)

Words formed from bissextile

Phrases with bissextile

Questions about bissextile

What does bissextile mean?
Bissextile means being or having an intercalary day, particularly the quadrennial leap day of the Julian and Gregorian calendars traditionally placed as a "second sixth" day before March 1st.
What is bissextile in Tamil?
Bissextile in Tamil is நாள் மிக்க ஆண்டு, நாள் மிகையான. See Bissextile meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bissextile?
Bissextile can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce bissextile?
Bissextile is pronounced /bɪˈsɛkstɪl/ (UK).

Words near bissextile in the dictionary

  1. Bissett
  2. Bissette
  3. Bissettes
  4. Bissetts
  5. bissext
  6. bissextile
  7. bissextile month
  8. bissextile months
  9. bissextile year
  10. bissextile years
  11. bissextiles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bissextile (page history and authors); bissextile (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-bissextile.wav, en-us-bissextile.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bissextile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bissextile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.