How to Use leap second in a Sentence

leap second

noun

• To date, all adjustments to time have involved adding a leap second.
  — Alice Gibbs, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 July 2025
• But unlike leap years, leap seconds are not predictable in advance.
  — Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 24 Mar. 2017
• The leap second was a valiant first attempt, but ultimately a flawed one.
  — Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 29 Nov. 2022
• Some tech companies think a negative leap second would turn the world upside down.
  — Rahul Rao, Popular Science, 20 Feb. 2023
• 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
• This is unlikely to ever be used, since there has never been a negative leap second.
  — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 19 July 2018
• This minuscule change in time could introduce the need for a negative leap second.
  — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 1 Aug. 2022
• But Levine doesn't think a negative leap second will really be needed.
  — CBS News, 27 Mar. 2024
• Since the first leap second was added in 1972, scientists have added leap seconds every few years.
  — Kate Golembiewski, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2021
• 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
• Fifty years ago, those qualities made inserting the leap second difficult.
  — Alanna Mitchell, New York Times, 14 Nov. 2022
• This time, Mendoza crushed a hard line drive over a leaping second baseman Brandt Broussard.
  — Brody Miller, nola.com, 9 June 2019
• 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
• The last leap second was positive and used at the end of December 2016.
  — Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025
• Few computer programs are written to allow for a negative leap second.
  — Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 15 Oct. 2024
• In 2016 Earth’s rotation started speeding up, so leap seconds have not been added since then.
  — Emma Gometz, Scientific American, 8 July 2026
• Like my wife, the world’s timekeepers have been forced to adjust their clocks, adding thirty-seven leap seconds since 1972.
  — Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2024
• In the past 23 years, scientists have added only four leap seconds, according to Agnew.
  — Bill Chappell, NPR, 30 Mar. 2024
• 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
• 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
• Recent projections suggest that the need for a negative leap second is likely to hit before 2035.
  — Emma Gometz, Scientific American, 8 July 2026
• If Earth’s spin rate continues to slightly increase, eventually officials won’t need to add leap seconds anymore.
  — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2024
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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