Complex Numbers

Quantum Leap Day

The one thing that can make February even worse than it's already is? Well, it's now. Today. Leap days make the worst month of the year even longer, almost as long as other months like April or September, but without their benefits.

Since my current daily blogging streak now encompasses two Leap Days, I thought I'd take a look to remind myself what I might have been talking about on February 29, 2020, just a few weeks before we took a leap right into a societal meltdown. But I didn't really acknowledge it then. Hell, I probably wouldn't acknowledge it now, if it weren't for "Invalid Item"  .

It's just another day, after all; though, if you're a salaried employee, you're working for free   today. Hope you took the day off and told the boss to take a flying leap.

I'm going to leap to the conclusion that you already know why there's a leap day.   Maybe you even know why it occurs in February within our largely arbitrary Gregorian calendar system. But what I didn't know, so I'm assuming no one else does either, is that the word "leap" in English is etymologically related to "lope," one of the many near-synonyms for "run."

Which leads me to ponder: the past tense of leap is either "leaped" or "leapt." I suspect "leapt" is more British than "leaped," but either is correct. This is similar to words like "dream," but, oddly, "sleep" only leaps into the past tense as "slept;" it's never "sleeped," even though it rhymes with "leaped."

English is weird. Obviously, the past tense of "leap" should be "lope." "We lope to the wrong conclusion yesterday," for example.

Ah well. Further such musings will have to wait another four years.