Oh my! Imagine my surprise when I saw in my inbox that the word of the day is Bissextus. The arrangement of those letters (like the x in the middle) drew me in. Surprise. What a fun word, which means nothing of what it suggests when you first see it. The perfect word for today!

Bissectus:

Noun.  February 29th: the extra day added to the Julian calendar every fourth year (except those evenly divisible by 400) to compensate for the approximately six hours a year by which the common year of 365 days falls short of the solar year.

This odd day was inserted after the sixth day before the kalends of March, i.e., after the 24th of February, and was not counted as an addition to the year, but as a sort of appendix. Hence the sixth of the kalends of March was called bissextus, or double sixth, which root is still retained in our word bissextile, though the day is now added at the end of February.
— E. S. Burns, “History of Chronology,” The Popular Science Monthly, April, 1881

Origin

Bissextus comes from the Latin term bissextus diēs meaning “intercalary day.” It was so called because the 6th day before the Calends of March (February 24th) appeared twice every leap year.

I have been thinking about this extra day. What a gift. Don’t we always say we do not have enough time to do things? If you could have today off, completely to yourself and were free to choose how to use that one extra day, what would you choose? Maybe you can’t make something special of this free day on this very day, so why not save it and “spend” it later, on something joyful or beautiful or soul-pleasing; even in service to others.