embolismic

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Compare French embolismique.

Adjective

embolismic (not comparable)

  1. Relating to embolism or intercalation.
    an embolismic year or month
    • 2013 August 8, Charlotte Mulcare, “The lost mathematicians: Numbers in the (not so) dark ages”, in plus.maths.org‎, retrieved 2013-09-08:
      To predict Easter computists needed to develop a cyclical table based around a common multiple m of solar years and lunar months: that is, one in which a whole number of solar years equated to a whole number of lunar months. The general idea was that m years after some reference year, Easter will be on the same date as in the reference year itself because a whole number of lunar months will have passed. The number of lunar months in those m solar years wouldn't be an exact multiple of 12 (since there are more lunar months than solar ones), so the period wouldn't equate to a whole number of lunar years. For this reason, an extra month, called an embolismic month, was added to some years in the lunar calendar to make sure that years counted in lunar months would not gradually creep more and more ahead of years counted in solar months.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for embolismic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Anagrams
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