Jahr

Jahr is a German noun meaning year, the time unit that corresponds to roughly one orbit of the Earth around the Sun. In everyday use it refers to the calendar year, the period from January 1 to December 31 in the Gregorian calendar. The word is neuter: das Jahr; the plural is die Jahre. It is used with numbers (ein Jahr, zwei Jahre) and in phrases denoting time spans, such as im letzten Jahr or seit drei Jahren. It also names specific years, for example das Jahr 2024.

Etymology and related terms: Jahr comes from Old High German jar and Proto-Germanic *jār, cognate with English year and Dutch jaar. The word is part of a broader family of Indo-European terms for the annual cycle, and its semantic field extends to expressions like Jahreszeit (season) and Jahresbericht (annual report).

Variants and compound forms: Kalenderjahr means calendar year; Geschäftsjahr denotes a fiscal year; Schuljahr or Studienjahr refer to an academic year. The construct appears in idioms such as Jahreswechsel (turn of the year), Jahresrückblick (year in review).

Length and calendar systems: In the Gregorian system, a common year has 365 days and a leap year 366 days, following the rule: leap years occur every four years, except that years divisible by 100 are leap years only if divisible by 400. The astronomical or tropical year is about 365.2422 days, which underpins calendar adjustments. Beyond calendars, "year" is used for other time frames, such as fiscal years or academic years.