Yearly means happening once every year or relating to a full year. Your birthday is a yearly celebration. A dentist visit might be a yearly checkup. Schools publish yearly reports on student progress.

The word can describe events that repeat annually: a family's yearly camping trip, a town's yearly harvest festival, or a company's yearly meeting. It can also describe measurements that cover twelve months: a tree's yearly growth, a library's yearly circulation numbers, or Earth's yearly journey around the sun.

Yearly and annual mean the same thing, though annual sounds more formal. You might say “our yearly trip to the beach” in conversation, but see “Annual Report” on an official document. Both words help us track time's passage and mark important recurring events in our lives.