yard是什么意思

Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was *gard-, which, as well as providing English with yard, has produced garden, garth [14] (via Old Norse), and the second syllable of orchard. Yard ‘three feet’ originally meant ‘stick, rod’ (a sense preserved nautically, as in yardarm [16]). It goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *gazdaz ‘pointed stick’ (source of the gad of gadfly [16], etymologically the fly with the ‘sting’).

From this was derived West Germanic *gazdjō, which evolved into German gerte ‘sapling, riding cane’, Dutch gard ‘twig, rod’, and English yard. The Anglo-Saxons used the term as a unit of measurement of land, equal to about five metres (what later became known as a rod, pole, or perch), but its modern use for ‘three feet’ did not emerge until the 14th century.