month
Sign in to saveA month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural phase cycle of the Moon; the words month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept of months arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such lunar months ("lunations") are synodic months and last approximately 29.53 days, making for roughly 12.37 such months in one Earth year. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moon's orbital period with respect to the Earth–Sun line,
AI overview
A month is a unit of time used in calendars that is roughly based on the Moon's natural cycle, which lasts about 29.53 days—this is why the words "month" and "Moon" are related. Months matter because they provide a practical way to organize time into manageable periods, a practice that humans have used since at least the Paleolithic age when people tracked days according to the Moon's phases.
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Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- orbit of the Moon
- Has part
- December
- Based on
- orbit of the Moon
- Duration
- +29.5
- Image
- Months circle svg.svg
Show 4 more facts
- P1889
- lunar month
- P910
- Category:Months
- P9059
- week
- P5008
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4 (2022)
Article
38 sectionsContents
- Types of months in astronomy
- Calendrical consequences
- Months in various calendars
- Beginning of the lunar month
- Ahom calendar
- Roman calendar
- Numerical relations
- Calends, nones, and ides
- Relations between dates, weekdays, and months in the Gregorian calendar
- Hebrew calendar
- Islamic calendar
- Arabic calendar
- Hindu calendar
- Baháʼí calendar
- Iranian calendar (Persian calendar)
- Reformed Bengali calendar
- Nanakshahi calendar
- Khmer calendar
- Thai calendar
- Tongan calendar
- Pingelapese
- Kollam era ([[Malayalam]]) calendar
- Sinhalese calendar
- Germanic calendar
- Old Georgian calendar
- Old Swedish calendar
- Old English calendar
- Old Celtic calendar
- Old Hungarian calendar
- Czech calendar
- Old Egyptian calendar
- Nisga'a calendar
- French Republican calendar
- Eastern Ojibwe calendar
- See also
- Footnotes
- References
- Sources
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural phase cycle of the Moon; the words month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept of months arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such lunar months ("lunations") are synodic months and last approximately 29.53 days, making for roughly 12.37 such months in one Earth year. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moon's orbital period with respect to the Earth–Sun line, are still the basis of many calendars today and are used to divide the year.
Calendars that developed from the Roman calendar system, such as the internationally used Gregorian calendar, divide the year into 12 months, each of which lasts between 28 and 31 days. The names of the months were Anglicized from various Latin names and events important to Rome, except for the months 9–12, which are named after the Latin numerals 7–10 (septem, octo, novem, and decem) because they were originally the seventh through tenth months in the Roman calendar. In the modern Gregorian calendar, the only month with a variable number of days is the second month, February, which has 29 days during a leap year and 28 days otherwise.