yard1
/jɑːd
/noun
1 (abbreviation yd) A unit of linear measure equal to 3 feet (0.9144 metre): a full skirt that took twenty yards of cloth...
- On the half hour mark Brian Pendergast let fly with a right foot shot from twenty yards.
- How many inches equal a yard is not something subject to daily fluctuations on the free or any other market.
- I headed the ball back inside and eventually the ball ended up at my feet 20 yards from goal and I just hit it.
1.1 (yards of) informal A great length of something: yards and yards of fine lace...
- There are dozens of scene switches, a multitude of props, yards of costume changes.
- Fisher insists, though, that his star performer brings more than just yards of hard-won advances down field.
- At night, take a torch and you can get within yards of marsupials, including the faintly horrid Tasmanian devil.
1.2A square or cubic yard, especially of sand or other building materials.On top of the trash, millions of cubic yards of fine white sand were pumped as a slurry from Rockaway Inlet....
- The rate of sludge generation in septic tanks is around 0.05 cubic yards every year for an individual.
- I paid for 25 cubic yards of concrete and a day's labor for eight concrete finishers, and we had a slab.
2A cylindrical spar, tapering to each end, slung across a ship’s mast for a sail to hang from.The Captain motioned with his eyes and his head to the main mast top yard....
- The argument is that a three-masted ship had three yards on each mast for the square sails, making nine in all.
- They could see Bowles and they waited, bracing themselves against the yard should the two ships collide.
3US informal 100 dollars; a 100 dollar bill: it cost two hundred up front—one yard for Maurice, one for the girl
Phrases
by the yard
Origin
Old English gerd (in sense 2), of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch gard 'twig, rod' and German Gerte.
The yard as a unit of length descends from Old English gerd ‘twig, stick, rod’, and has been the standard English unit of measure equal to three feet since the later medieval period. Since the Old English period this yard has also been a nautical term for a long spar for a square sail to hang from. See also sun. The other yard derives from Old English geard ‘building, home, enclosure’ and is related to garden and orchard, and also to Russian gorod ‘town’, used in place names such as Novgorod. In Britain a yard is usually an enclosed piece of ground near a building, whereas in the USA it means the garden of a house. In Jamaican English yard means ‘a house or home’, and among expatriate Jamaicans Yard is Jamaica. This is the origin of Yardie, used by Jamaicans for a fellow Jamaican, but since the mid 1980s in Britain to refer to a member of a Jamaican or West Indian gang of criminals.
Rhymes
yard2
/jɑːd/noun
1chiefly British A piece of uncultivated ground adjoining a building, typically one enclosed by walls or other buildings: tiny houses with the lavatory in the yard...
- They took their food and went to sit on the low wall that enclosed the yard.
- The village square is dominated by a pristine, thatched church enclosed within a walled yard.
- There was a yard enclosed by a high brick wall at one end of the place.
1.1North American The garden of a house.You may even find some that prove more useful in the yard and garden than in your kitchen....
- So, you have decided to plant rose bushes in your yard or on your patio, porch or balcony.
- You'd get to know them, and pretty soon we were just like anybody else hanging out in the yard.
Synonyms
backyard, garden;
courtyard, court, quadrangle, enclosure, cloister, close
informal quad
2An area of land used for a particular purpose or business: a builder’s yard...
- Five or six trips to the dump yard on the far lands and I stopped for something to eat.
- These traders require access to their stores and yards to run their businesses.
- My father has a little family business, a scrap-metal business with a yard and lorry.
Synonyms
workshop, works, factory, garage, plant, foundry, mill, industrial unit, business unit;
shipyard
archaic manufactory
2.1 (the Yard) British informal term for Scotland Yard.
3West Indian A house and the land attached.To enter where he is, one must pass several shrines and offerings all about the yard of his home....
- I was walking around the yard of the house where Natty, MBJr. and I are living and I happened to glance over the fence.
- Sulchan reportedly opened the door without anyone knowing and ran out behind her father as he was reversing into the yard of their Freeport home.
3.1An urban residential compound comprising a number of small rented dwellings around a shared open area.For a while I also shared a yard with a British chap named Roy who worked as a foreman on the project....
- There are 14 small shacks and brick houses opening on to the yard, sharing a central tap and stone basin.
- Dai people build their wooden housing compound in a yard.
3.2South African A plot of land, or the grounds of a building, accommodating a number of small rooms let out as living space.The yard and room are now to be transformed into a tourist site, to be called the Mandela Yard Interpretation Centre....
- The yard and the room that he rented are being developed into what will be known as the Mandela Yard Interpretation Centre.
- Additional separate rooms, called backyard shacks, occupy most of the space in most yards, to form ‘town houses’.
4 (Yard) (Especially among expatriate Jamaicans) home; Jamaica: life in Yard is no Caribbean holiday...
- Bob born and grow a Yard, and thats where his body should rest, you simi?
- I have had chinese food at a number of places, including New York, Philly, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles and probably a few more places that I don't remember, and nowhere else has it tasted as irie as it does back a Yard.
- Bwoy, I wish the Commish and his British second every success, but I also read that the British dude, along with plenty other police, had to run for their lives recently when they were touring a rough neighbourhood back a Yard!
verb [with object]
1North American Store or transport (wood) in or to a timber yard: he is the last logger to be using a sled for yarding logs (as noun yarding) Canadian operators never practised yarding on a wider scale...
- On this site, they tackle the block in smaller segments completing some falling and then yarding that wood before moving on.
- Such overhead logging methods were paired with cable yarding systems that dragged the logs to their loading sites.
- The paper company initially attempted to introduce a capital-intensive cable yarding logging system near Atepec in 1958, but the community opposed this system, which relied upon outside labor to manage the machinery.
2Put (farm animals) into an enclosure: sheep should be yarded even in the spring...
- They both helped in yarding the sheep, sweeping out the woolshed during shearing (Judy became a proficient shearer), taking morning and afternoon tea to the shearers, and helping drive mobs.
- In December 1879 great indignation was felt by all about the brutal assault against Mr Best because he had yarded some trespassing cattle and would not let them go before the owners had paid for the damages.
- Much like their forefathers, they yard the cattle with ease and grace, born to the country that surrounds them.
3 [no object] North American (Of moose) gather as a herd for the winter: they note changes in the numbers of moose yarding together...
- When snow is deep and moose ''yard'' together, they are more accessible in greater numbers to wolves.
- Although they yard together in spring, during most of the year, moose are solitary secretive animals and very wary of mankind.
Origin
Old English geard 'building, home, region', from a Germanic base related to Russian gorod 'town'. Compare with garden and orchard.