yard
Meanings
- A small, usually uncultivated area adjoining or (now especially) within the precincts of a house or other building.
- The property surrounding one's house, typically dominated by one's lawn.
- An enclosed outdoors area designated for a specific purpose, e.g. on farms, railways etc.
- A place where moose or deer herd together in winter for pasture, protection, etc.
- One’s house or home.
- To confine to a yard.
- A unit of length equal to 3 feet in the US customary and British imperial systems of measurement, equal to precisely 0.9144 m since 1959 (US) or 1963 (UK).
- Ellipsis of square yard, a unit of area; common with textiles.
- Ellipsis of cubic yard, a unit of volume; common in mining and earthmoving.
- Units of similar composition or length in other systems.
- Any spar carried aloft.
- A long tapered timber hung on a mast to which is bent a sail, and may be further qualified as a square, lateen, or lug yard. The first is hung at right angles to the mast, the last two hang obliquely.
- A branch, twig, or shoot.
- A staff, rod, or stick.
- A penis.
- 100 dollars.
- The yardland, an obsolete English unit of land roughly understood as 30 acres.
- The rod, a surveying unit of (once) 15 or (now) 16+¹⁄₂ feet.
- To move a yard at a time, as opposed to inching along.
- 10⁹, A short scale billion; a long scale thousand millions or milliard.
- One hundred, usually referring to currency or money's worth.
- Scotland Yard or New Scotland Yard
- The Metropolitan Police Service
- Jamaica
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʰerdʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *gʰórdʰos Proto-Germanic *gardaz Proto-West Germanic *gard Old English ġeard Middle English yerd English yard From Middle English yerd, yard, ȝerd, ȝeard, from Old English ġeard (“yard, garden, fence, enclosure”), from Proto-West Germanic *gard, from Proto-Germanic *gardaz (“enclosure, yard”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰórdʰos, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰerdʰ- (“to enclose”). See also North Frisian guard, Guart (“garden, yard”), Dutch gaard, gaarde (“garden, yard”), German Garten (“garden, yard”), Danish, Swedish gård (“farm, estate, land; court, yard”), Faroese, Icelandic garður (“garden; fence”), Norn gart (“farm”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk gard, gård (“farm; townhouse”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍂𐌳𐍃 (gards, “court, yard; house”), Lithuanian gardas (“pen, enclosure”), Russian го́род (górod, “town”), Serbo-Croatian grad (“town”), Slovene grad (“castle”), Albanian gardh (“fence”), Romanian gard (“fence”), Avestan 𐬔𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬛𐬵𐬀 (gərədha, “dev's cave”), Sanskrit गृह (gṛha, “house, habitation, home, dwelling”)), Medieval Latin gardinus, jardinus (“garden, yard”). Doublet of garden, garth, and gord.