Anno bisestile (leap year)

Common Italian collocation

Literally	No direct translation (see notes below)
IPA pronunciation	/ˈanno bisɛˈstiːle/
You do NOT say	Anno salto

What’s an anno bisestile?

It’s a year with an extra day (added as February 29th, 29 febbraio) that occurs every 4 “regular” years.

This is done because a seasonal year (or astronomical year, the time it takes for the Earth to revolve once around the Sun) is actually a little longer than 365 days sharp. It is about 365 days + 6 hours. So every 4 years, you’ll have to add one day to keep up with the Earth’s movements.

What’s bisestile?

Bisestile is an adjective that has no other use in Italian except for accompany “year”. This is very different from English, where leap is both a noun and a verb and can be used in many other contexts.

It comes from the Latin word bisextilis, which literally means “that which has the sixth day twice”. This is because the Romans counted the 6th day prior to the Kalends of March twice during each leap year. It wasn’t until the Julian calendar reform that we began the practice of adding an extra day after February 28th.

Bisestile has only two forms because adjectives ending in -e in Italian remain unchanged for both genders, but must agree with the number (singular/plural) of the noun they describe.

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	Bisestile	Bisestili
Feminine	Bisestile	Bisestili

For example, you can say…

There is also a very popular Italian saying that goes anno bisesto, anno funesto.

There’s a superstition in Italy that leap years bring bad luck. This proverb can be literally translated as “leap year, unlucky year”. Bisesto is a less common synonym for bisestile and it’s used here to rhyme with funesto, which can be translated as “baleful” or “ominous”.

Examples

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