Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Heraclitean River: No, February 29th is NOT "Bissextile Day"

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No, February 29th is NOT "Bissextile Day"
February 28, 2016, by Heraclitus

A new use of an old obscure word has emerged in recent years.  With leap day approaching, we will undoubtedly hear a number of sources wishing a “Happy Bissextile Day!” for February 29th.

The problem is that the term bissextile day does not refer to February 29th, and it never did.  I assume some folks get this mistaken impression due to old dictionaries that state the definition of bissextile day as something like “the day added to leap years.”  That definition is correct, but the problem is such definitions were written back when educated people would have understood that “the day added to leap years” was February 24th, not February 29th.

“Huh?” you say.  “What do you mean, February 24th is added in leap years?  That makes no sense.”  Well, it doesn’t make sense in modern calendars, but that is in fact when the bissextile day happens in leap years.  Thus, if you want to use that fancy word, don’t use it for the 29th.  Let me explain.

I just discovered (thanks to a reader who pointed it out to me) that the Heraclitean River blog no longer exists. I don't know exactly when it went down, but it's currently occupied by a domain squatter. According to the Wayback Machine, the site seems to have been down in March 2018 (the last capture) and the last valid capture of the home page was in October 2017. So we can assume that it went down some time between those two dates.

I don't know why the site went away, but as a part of my discovering this, I read the last article posted and since it is very interesting, I'm sharing it with you. Please read the full article and share it with your friends - it's a fascinating read.