year

The word “year” means the time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun once, about 365 days. In plain terms, the 12-month period it takes Earth to go around the Sun, or a stage in schooling.

“Year” is pronounced yeer (/jɪɹ/ in IPA).

Here is “year” used in a sentence: “They celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary this year.”

Words with a similar meaning to “year” include accounting year, base year, dog year, financial year, fiscal year and liturgical year.

“Year” is a noun.

The word “year” comes from Old English. From Old English ġēar, from a very old Germanic and Indo-European root meaning "year" or "spring" — a distant cousin of the words "hora" and "hour.".

“Year” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

“Year” has 3 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: the time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun once, about 365 days.

A year measures one full orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and that journey takes roughly 365 days. The orbit is not a whole number of days, though — it is about 365 and a quarter. Those leftover quarter-days are collected up and added as an extra day every four years.

A leap year has 366 days instead of 365, with the extra day added as 29 February. It happens roughly every four years to make up for the quarter-day the Earth takes beyond 365 days to orbit the Sun. Without leap years, the calendar would slowly drift out of step with the seasons.

Besides the everyday calendar year of 365 days, there is the solar or tropical year (the seasonal cycle), the sidereal year (Earth's orbit measured against the stars), and human-made spans like the fiscal year for accounting and the academic year for schools. They differ in start point and exact length.

A year contains 12 months and about 52 weeks — 52 weeks and one extra day, to be precise (two in a leap year). That is why a given date falls one weekday later each year. All of this stems from the roughly 365 days it takes Earth to circle the Sun.