- yard
- (yd)1. a traditional unit of distance equal to 3 feet or 36 inches. The word comes from a Saxon word gyrd or gyard meaning a stick, although the unit known as the gyrd in Saxon times was actually the rod1, not the yard. The yard was established after the Norman conquest of 1066. According to tradition, King Henry I decreed that the yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of his outstretched finger, thus defining the yard as exactly 1/2 fathom. Whether this actually happened or not, it does seem that the yard and the English foot were set at close to their modern lengths during or around the time of Henry's reign (1100-1135). The length of the oldest known standard yardstick, believed to date from 1445, agrees with the modern length within less than 0.1 millimeter. Today one yard is officially equal to exactly 91.44 centimeters or 0.9144 meter; this definition was adopted in the U.S. in 1959 and in Britain by the Weights and Measures Act of 1963.2. the yard is traditionally used as a unit of area for materials sold in standard rolls, such as cloth, carpet, linoleum, fencing, and so on. In each case, one yard represents an area one yard long and as wide as the roll width. See bolt.3. a cubic yard (about 764.6 liters). Bulk commodities like sand or topsoil are often sold by the "yard."
Dictionary of units of measurement. 2015.
