Yard (land)

Examples of such words are: courtyard, barnyard, hopyard, graveyard, churchyard, brickyard, prison yard, railyard, junkyard, stableyard, and dooryard.

[2] One possible account of the origin is the Middle English yerd, going back to Old English geard "fence, enclosure, dwelling, home, district, country," going back to Germanic *garđa- (whence also Old Saxon gard "garden, (compare the Frenchjardin) dwelling, world," Middle Dutch gaert "garden, yard," Old High German gart "enclosure, circle, enclosed piece of property," Old Norse garðr "enclosure, courtyard," Gothic gards (i-stem) "house, household, courtyard"; from an n-stem *garđan-: Old Frisian garda "family property, courtyard," Old Saxon gardo "garden," Old High German garto), perhaps (if from *ghortós) going back to Indo-European *ghortos "enclosure," whence also Old Irish gort "arable or pasture field," Welsh garth "field, enclosure, fold," Breton garz "hedge," Latin hortus "garden," Greek chórtos "farm-yard", "feeding-place", "fodder", (from which "hay" originally as grown in an enclosed field).

In Australia, portable or mobile yards are sets of transportable steel panels used to build temporary stockyards.

[5] In North America and Australasia today, a yard can be any part of a property surrounding or associated with a house or other residential structure, usually (although not necessarily) separate from a garden (where plant maintenance is more formalized).

[7] In modern Britain, the term yard is also used for land adjacent to or amongst workplace buildings or for commercial premises, for example timberyard, boatyard or dockyard.