Definition of YARD

yard

Plural: yard, yards

Noun

  • a unit of length equal to 3 feet; defined as 91.44 centimeters; originally taken to be the average length of a stride
  • the enclosed land around a house or other building
    • "it was a small house with almost no yard"
  • a tract of land enclosed for particular activities (sometimes paved and usually associated with buildings)
    • "they opened a repair yard on the edge of town"
  • the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100
  • a unit of volume (as for sand or gravel)
  • a tract of land where logs are accumulated
  • an area having a network of railway tracks and sidings for storage and maintenance of cars and engines
  • a long horizontal spar tapered at the end and used to support and spread a square sail or lateen
  • an enclosure for animals (as chicken or livestock)
  • 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 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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 cubic yard, a unit of volume; common in mining and earthmoving.
  • Units of similar composition or length in other systems.
  • Any spar carried aloft.
  • 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 latter 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.
  • The rood, area bound by a square rod, ¹⁄₄ acre.
  • 10⁹, A short scale billion; a long scale thousand millions or milliard.

Verb

Verb Forms: yarded, yarding, yards

  • To place or confine livestock within an enclosure.
  • To confine to a yard.
  • To move a yard at a time, as opposed to inching along.

Examples

  • I need to hedge a yard of yen.
  • The Scrabble player tried to YARD a tricky Q onto a double letter score, but the letters just didn’t align.

Origin / Etymology

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 Dutch gaard, obsolete German Gart, German Garten, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål gård, Norwegian Nynorsk gard, Lithuanian gardas (“pen, enclosure”), Russian го́род (górod, “town”), Serbo-Croatian and Slovene grad ("town"), Albanian gardh (“fence”), Romanian gard, Avestan 𐬔𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬛𐬵𐬀 (gərədha, “dev's cave”), Sanskrit गृह (gṛha)), Medieval Latin gardinus, jardinus. Doublet of garden, garth, and gord.

Synonyms

1000, chiliad, cubic yard, curtilage, G, grand, grounds, K, M, one thousand, pace, railway yard, railyard, thou, thousand, $100, ell, garden, rod, rood, virgate

Scrabble Score: 8

yard: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
yard: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
yard: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 7

yard: valid Words With Friends Word