Word.ws English Dictionary

yard

/ˈjɑːd//ˈjɑɹd/

yard noun: a small, usually uncultivated area adjoining or (now especially) within the precincts of a house or other building. Also the ellipsis of square yard.

Noun (1)

yard (plural yards)

  1. A small, usually uncultivated area adjoining or (now especially) within the precincts of a house or other building.
    • 'Twas early June, the new grass was flourishing everywheres, the posies in the yard—peonies and such—in full bloom, the sun was shining, and the water of the bay was blue, with light green streaks where the shoal showed.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  2. (Australia, Canada, US) The property surrounding one's house, typically dominated by one's lawn.
    Synonyms:
    garden
  3. An enclosed outdoors area designated for a specific purpose, e.g. on farms, railways etc.
    • A little further on, to the right, was a large garage, where the charabancs stood, half in and half out of the yard.1931, Francis Beeding, “2/2”, in Death Walks in Eastrepps
    • Pilton Yard, the Lynton & Barnstaple headquarters, has been taken over by a fur trading firm, and would-be trespassers to the old engine-shed are turned back by the pungent odour of heaps of carcases.1951 February, “Notes and News: Lynton & Barnstaple Remains”, in Railway Magazine, page 136
  4. A place where moose or deer herd together in winter for pasture, protection, etc.
  5. (Jamaica, Multicultural-London-English) One’s house or home.
    • Man’s devilish cunt, tell me nutting about friends, that’s dead
      Cuz I run up in yards,
      No vest, tryna ching man’s chest
      And leave him dead2020 December 15, “We Paid (Remix)”, performed by #GS28 Goose, 0:15–0:21

Verb (1)

yard (third-person singular simple present yards, present participle yarding, simple past and past participle yarded)

  1. (transitive) To confine to a yard.
    • As they reached the door, Bose, having yarded the cows, was stealing around the corner of the pig-sty, and making for the woods.1893, Elijah Kellogg, Good old times, or, Grandfather's struggles for a homestead
    • The sheep were straggling in a manner that meant walking work to round them, and he supposed he would have to yard them tonight, if she didn't liven up.1902, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Bush Studies (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 14

Noun (2)

yard (plural yards or (UK colloquial) yard)

  1. 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).
    • Thinks I to myself, “Sol, you're run off your course again. This is a rich man's summer ‘cottage’[…].” So I started to back away again into the bushes. But I hadn't backed more'n a couple of yards when I see something so amazing that I couldn't help scooching down behind the bayberries and looking...1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  2. Units of similar composition or length in other systems.
  3. Any spar carried aloft.
    1. 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.
  4. (obsolete) A branch, twig, or shoot.
  5. (obsolete) A staff, rod, or stick.
  6. (obsolete) A penis.
    • Loues her by the foot. Dum. He may not by the yard.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • there were some people found who tooke pleasure to unhood the end of their yard, and to cut off the fore-skinne after the manner of the Mahometans and Jewes[…].1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  7. (US, slang, uncommon) 100 dollars.
  8. (obsolete) The yardland, an obsolete English unit of land roughly understood as 30 acres.
    • You must note, that two Fardells of Land make a Nooke of Land, and two Nookes make halfe a Yard of Land.a. 1634, W. Noye, The Complete Lawyer, section 57
  9. (obsolete) The rod, a surveying unit of (once) 15 or (now) 16+¹⁄₂ feet.
    Synonyms:
    rod
  10. (obsolete) The rood, area bound by a square rod, ¹⁄₄ acre.
  11. (obsolete outside of fossil forms) A tall, slender, hollow receptacle or tool.

Verb (2)

yard (third-person singular simple present yards, present participle yarding, simple past and past participle yarded)

  1. (humorous, intransitive) To move a yard at a time, as opposed to inching along.
    • He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true.1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 62

Noun (3)

yard (plural yards)

  1. 10⁹, A short scale billion; a long scale thousand millions or milliard.
    • I need to hedge a yard of yen.
  2. (slang) One hundred, usually referring to currency or money's worth.
    • How much coke you want?
      Gimme a yard.

Proper noun capitalized: Yard

the Yard

  1. Scotland Yard or New Scotland Yard
    • 'Suppose we walk across to Scotland Yard, and you can tell me on the way.'
    • At the corner of Derby Street they encountered two men who had just turned out of the Yard.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
  2. (figuratively, metonymically) The Metropolitan Police Service
  3. (Jamaica) Jamaica

Also used as

yard is also the ellipsis of square yard.

yard is also the ellipsis of cubic yard.

yard meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

yard in Hindi

land around a house
बाड़ा bāṛā
enclosed area for a specific purpose
प्रांगण prāṅgaṇ, आँगन āṅgan
three feet
गज़ gaz

yard in Marathi

यार्ड, आवार

yard in Urdu

three feet
گز gaz

yard in Bengali

three feet
গজ goj
More languagesFewer languages
yard in Telugu
గజం gajaṁ
yard in Malayalam
യാർഡ്
yard in Punjabi
ਵਿਹਡ਼ਾ, ਯਾਰਡ
yard in Gujarati
યાર્ડ
yard in Nepali
यार्ड
yard in Tagalog
yarda
yard in Arabic
حَدِيقَة ḥadīqa, يَارْدَة yārda, يَارْد yārd
yard in Malay
ela
yard in Persian
حیاط hayât, دکل dakal, یارد yârd
yard in Thai
ลาน laan, สนาม sà-nǎam, หลา lǎa
yard in Vietnamese
sân, thước Anh, yard
yard in Myanmar
ဝင်းခြံ wang:hkram, အိမ်ဝင်း im-wang:, ယာဒ် yad, ကိုက် kuik

Examples of yard in a sentence

  • We still have a couple hours left to do in the yard.
  • The fruit trees in the yard keep me in apples and pears for most of the year.
  • The house had a small yard of about six rods in size.

All 40 example sentences with yard

Synonyms of yard

Forms of yard

Noun
pluralyards
alternative pronunciation-spellingyod
alternative Scotland (obsolete)yaird
alternative form (archaic)yeard
alternative form (obsolete)yerd
plural UK (colloquial)yard
Verb
third-person singular presentyards
present participleyarding
past participleyarded
pastyarded

Plural of yard: yards

Origin of 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.

From Middle English yerde, yerd, ȝerde, from Old English ġierd (“branch; rod, staff; measuring stick; yardland”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaʀd, from Proto-Germanic *gazdaz. Cognate with Dutch gard (“twig”), German Gerte and probably related to Latin hasta (“spear”).

Clipping of milliard.

Words formed from yard

Phrases with yard

49 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with yard

31 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about yard

What does yard mean?
Yard means a small, usually uncultivated area adjoining or (now especially) within the precincts of a house or other building.
What is yard in Hindi?
Yard in Hindi is बाड़ा (bāṛā), प्रांगण (prāṅgaṇ), आँगन (āṅgan). See Yard meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is yard?
Yard can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce yard?
Yard is pronounced /ˈjɑːd/ (UK).
What is the plural of yard?
The plural of yard is yards.

Words near yard in the dictionary

  1. yarbs
  2. Yarck
  3. yarco
  4. Yarcombe
  5. yarcos
  6. yard
  7. yard ape
  8. yard apes
  9. yard arm
  10. yard arms
  11. yard bird

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yard (page history and authors); Yard (page history and authors); yard (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yard (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yard (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yard (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yard (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-yard.wav, en-us-yard.ogg.

Cite this entry: “yard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.