Yard

The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.9144 meter. A distance of 1,760 yards is equal to 1 mile. The theoretical US survey yard is very slightly longer.

Name

The term, yard derives from the Old English gerd, gyrd etc., which was used for branches, staves and measuring rods. It is first attested in the late 7th century laws of Ine of Wessex, wherein the "yard of land" mentioned is the yardland, an old English unit of tax assessment equal to 1⁄4 hide. Old and Middle English both used their forms of "yard" to denote the surveying lengths of 15 feet (4.6 m) or 16.5 feet (5.0 m), used in computing acres, a distance now usually known as the "rod". A unit of three English feet is attested in a statute of c. 1300 (see below), but there it is called an ell (ulna, lit. "arm"), a separate and usually longer unit of around 45 inches (1,100 mm). The use of the word ‘yard’ (Middle English: ȝerd or ȝerde) to describe this length is first attested in William Langland's poem on Piers Plowman. The usage seems to derive from the prototype standard rods held by the king and his magistrates (see below). The word 'yard' is a homonym of 'yard' in the sense of an enclosed area of land. This second meaning of 'yard' has an etymology related to the word 'garden' and is not related to the unit of measurement. In India the yard is colloquially known as a guz, which equals 3 feet.

History

Origin The origin of the yard measure is uncertain. Both the Romans and the Welsh used multiples of a shorter foot, but 2+1⁄2 Roman feet was a "step" (Latin: gradus) and 3 Welsh feet was a "pace" (Welsh: cam). The Proto-Germanic "cubit" or arm's-length has been reconstructed as *alinô, which developed into the Old English eln, Middle English elne, and modern ell of 1.25 yd (1.14 m). This has led some to derive the yard of three English feet from pacing; others from the ell or cubit; and still others from Henry I's arm standard. Based on the etymology of the other "yard", some suggest it originally derived from the girth of a person's waist, while others believe it originated as a cubic measure. One official British report writes:

The standard of measure has always been taken either from some part of the human body, such as a foot, the length of the arm, the span of the hand, or from other natural objects, such as a barleycorn, or other kind of grain. But the yard was the original standard adopted by the early English sovereigns, and has been supposed to be founded upon the breadth of the chest of the Saxon race. The yard continued till the reign of Henry VII., when the ell was introduced, that being a yard and a quarter, or 45 inches. The ell was borrowed from the Paris drapers. Subsequently, however, Queen Elizabeth re-introduced the yard as the English standard of measure.

From ell to yard The earliest record of a prototype measure is the statute II Edgar Cap. 8 (AD 959 x 963), which survives in several variant manuscripts. In it, Edgar the Peaceful directed the Witenagemot at Andover that "the measure held at Winchester" should be observed throughout his realm. (Some manuscripts read "at London and at Winchester".) The statutes of William I similarly refer to and uphold the standard measures of his predecessors without naming them.

William of Malmesbury's Deeds of the Kings of England records that during the reign of Henry I (1100–1135), "the measure of his arm was applied to correct the false ell of the traders and enjoined on all throughout England." The folktale that the length was bounded by the king's nose was added some centuries later. Charles Moore Watson dismisses William's account as "childish", but William was among the most conscientious and trustworthy medieval historians. The French "king's foot" was supposed to have derived from Charlemagne, and the English kings subsequently repeatedly intervened to impose shorter units with the aim of increasing tax revenue. The earliest surviving definition of this shorter unit appears in the Act on the Composition of Yards and Perches, one of the statutes of uncertain date tentatively dated to the reign of Edward I or II c. 1300. Its wording varies in surviving accounts. One reads:

It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard, 5 yards and a half make a perch, and 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre. The Liber Horn compilation (1311) includes that statute with slightly different wording and adds:

And be it remembered that the iron yard of our Lord the King containeth 3 feet and no more, and a foot ought to contain 12 inches by the right measure of this yard measured, to wit, the 36th part of this yard rightly measured maketh 1 inch neither more nor less and 5 yards and a half make a perch that is 16 feet and a half measured by the aforesaid yard of our Lord the King. In some early books, this act was appended to another statute of uncertain date titled the Statute for the Measuring of Land. The act was not repealed until the Weights and Measures Act 1824.

Yard and inch In a law of 1439 (18 Hen. 6. c. 16) the sale of cloth by the "yard and handful" was abolished, and the "yard and inch" instituted (see ell).

There shall be but one Measure of Cloth through the Realm by the Yard and the Inch, and not by the Yard and Handful, according to the London Measure. According to Connor, cloth merchants had previously sold cloth by the yard and handful to evade high taxes on cloth (the extra handful being essentially a black-market transaction). Enforcement efforts resulted in cloth merchants switching over to the yard and inch, at which point the government gave up and made the yard and inch official. In 1552, the yard and inch for cloth measurement was again sanctioned in law (5 & 6 Edw. 6. c. 6. An Act for the true making of Woolen Cloth.)

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