yard [OE] The yard as a unit of length descends from Old English gerd ‘twig, stick, rod’, and has been the standard English unit of measure equal to three feet since the later medieval period. Since the Old English period yard in the ‘rod’ sense has also been a nautical term for a spar for a square sail to hang from. See also sun. The other yard derives from Old English geard ‘building, home, enclosure’ and is related to *garden and *orchard, and also to Russian gorod ‘town’, used in place names such as Novgorod. In Britain a yard is usually an enclosed piece of ground near a building, whereas in the USA it means the garden of a house. In Jamaican English yard means ‘a house or home’, and among expatriate Jamaicans Yard is Jamaica. This is the origin of Yardie, used by Jamaicans for a fellow Jamaican, but since the mid 1980s in Britain to refer to a member of a Jamaican or West Indian gang.