How to Use leap second in a Sentence

leap second

noun
  • With the reversal of that trend in the past years, the last time a positive leap second was added was on the last day of 2016.
    Christine Mui, Fortune, 4 Aug. 2022
  • After that, the leap second's time will have likely come.
    Kevin Purdy, Ars Technica, 22 Nov. 2022
  • Every time the gap is more than 0.9 seconds, an extra second is added to UTC—a leap second—to bring the two back in sync.
    Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 19 July 2018
  • To avoid this Google added a millisecond of time to their servers with each update so they were caught up with the new time when the leap second occurred.
    Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 21 May 2015
  • The leap second was a valiant first attempt, but ultimately a flawed one.
    Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 29 Nov. 2022
  • When a leap second was added on a weekend in 2012, huge websites like Mozilla, Reddit and LinkedIn crashed.
    Noelle Devoe, Seventeen, 30 June 2015
  • Since the first leap second was added in 1972, scientists have added leap seconds every few years.
    Kate Golembiewski, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2021
  • Leap seconds have been added in the past – the first leap second was added was in 1972, and they're typically added in June or December.
    Sarah Raza, USA TODAY, 5 Aug. 2022
  • But unlike leap years, leap seconds are not predictable in advance.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 24 Mar. 2017
  • This time, Mendoza crushed a hard line drive over a leaping second baseman Brandt Broussard.
    Brody Miller, nola.com, 9 June 2019
  • Leap seconds have been added in the past; first leap second was added was in 1972, and they're typically added in June or December.
    Sarah Raza, Detroit Free Press, 3 Aug. 2022
  • As opposed to leap years, which have an extra day added, a negative leap second would mean clocks skip one second.
    Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 3 Aug. 2022
  • Some tech companies think a negative leap second would turn the world upside down.
    Rahul Rao, Popular Science, 20 Feb. 2023
  • The last leap second, in 2012, wreaked havoc on popular websites with clocks synced to standard civil time.
    Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 21 May 2015
  • This minuscule change in time could introduce the need for a negative leap second.
    Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 1 Aug. 2022
  • This is unlikely to ever be used, since there has never been a negative leap second.
    Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 19 July 2018
  • Ryan Solberg's single got past a leaping second baseman to move Villarreal over from first, but a pop out to center ended the threat.
    Justin Maskulinski, Houston Chronicle, 1 June 2018
  • The phenomenon of the leap second, which is designed to control for unpredictable variations in the Earth's rotation.
    Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, 24 Jan. 2018
  • Scientists across the globe debated for 20-plus years whether to ditch the leap second, finally reaching consensus during a meeting in France.
    Jacob Carpenter, Fortune, 21 Nov. 2022
  • But the overall trend in recent decades is a slower spin, meaning changing leap second policy cuts both ways: adding and subtracting a second, depending on the year.
    Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 11 Jan. 2021
  • Fifty years ago, those qualities made inserting the leap second difficult.
    Alanna Mitchell, New York Times, 14 Nov. 2022
  • Technically, there can also be negative leap seconds, should UTC ever get more than 0.9 seconds ahead of atomic time.
    Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 19 July 2018
  • Because Earth is now rotating faster, a leap second would need to be taken away to catch our timekeeping up with Earth's increasing rotational speed, McCarthy said.
    Megan Marples, CNN, 8 Aug. 2022
  • As a result, the international time community has had to insert periodic leap seconds into the scale.
    Tom Vanderbilt, Harper’s Magazine , 13 Mar. 2023
  • That all seems to make sense, but some people are majorly freaking out about the leap second, because messing with time has historically wreaked havoc on our technology-dependent world.
    Noelle Devoe, Seventeen, 30 June 2015
  • Whether a regular leap second or a negative leap second is called for, in fact, these tiny changes can be a massive headache for industries ranging from telecommunications to navigation systems.
    Kate Golembiewski, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2021
  • Eventually, the effects of tidal friction should overcome all those other factors, and Earth’s days will get longer and longer as its rotation keeps slowing (forcing timekeepers to add leap seconds to the calendar periodically).
    Brian Resnick, Vox, 14 June 2019
  • Eventually, the effects of tidal friction should overcome all those other factors, and Earth’s days will get longer and longer as the planet’s rotation keeps slowing (forcing timekeepers to add leap seconds to the calendar periodically).
    Brian Resnick, Vox, 18 Dec. 2018
  • System administrators everywhere, especially at larger companies, will never know what catastrophes awaited them with the next leap second.
    Kevin Purdy, Ars Technica, 22 Nov. 2022
  • Some scientists propose introducing a negative leap second.
    Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 3 Aug. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'leap second.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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