Definition of "leap year"
A year in the Julian or Gregorian calendars with an intercalary day added to February, used to adjust for the extra hours of the solar year; a 366-day year.
Quotations
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 preceding, which was the additional or intercalary day, was called bis-sexto calendas,—hence the term bissextile, which is still employed to distinguish the year of 366 days. The English denomination of leap-year would have been more appropriate if that year had differed from common years in defect, and contained only 364 days. In the ecclesiastical calendar the intercalary day is still placed between the 24th and 25th of February; in the civil calendar it is the 29th.
1878, W.S.B. Woolhouse & al., "Calendar" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. IV, p. 666–7