English

Pronunciation

Noun

yards

1. Plural of yard
2. In the context of "nautical|pluralonly": The totality of the sailing rig.

   Her yards were bare and cockabill.

French

Noun

m|p

1. Plural of yard

A yard (abbreviation: yd) is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system. The most commonly used yard today is the international yard which by definition is equal to 0.9144 metre.

The yard is used as the standard unit of field length measurement in both the American, English and Canadian games of football (although Canada has officially adopted the metric system).

The yard is used on road signs and markers in the UK. Indeed, it is illegal to display length/speed in metres/kilometres on road signs in the UK, as this would cause confusion.

A corresponding unit of area is the square yard.

Yard is also a slang word, used particularly in currency trading, for one billion units of a currency, e.g., a yard of dollars is $1bn, thus a buyer of a billion dollars could say "I'm a buyer of a yard of dollars."

Equivalence to other units of length

1 international yard is equal to:

• 0.5 fathom (1 fathom is equal to 2 yards)
• 3 feet (1 foot is a third of a yard)
• 36 inches
• 0.9144 metre (1 metre is equal to about 1.0936 international yards)

The early yard was divided by the binary method into two, four, eight, and sixteen parts called the half-yard, span, finger, and nail. Two yards are a fathom.

Historical origin

The yard derives its name from the word for a straight branch or rod, although the precise origin of the measure is not definitely known. Some believe it derived from the double cubit, or that it originated from cubic measure, others from its near equivalents, like the length of a stride or pace. One postulate was that the yard was derived from the girth of a person's waist, while another claim held that the measure was invented by Henry I of England as being the distance between the tip of his nose and the end of his thumb. These are believed to be more likely standardising events than a random invention of the measure.

In currency and financial market usage, "yard" derives from "milliard", a now rarely used term for 1,000,000,000.

References

See also

• English unit
• Imperial unit
• Guz, the yard of the Middle East
• United States customary units
• Vara