Acre definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (13)

American Heritage Dictionary (4)

noun A unit of area in the U.S. Customary System, used in land and sea floor measurement and equal to 160 square rods, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet. See Table at measurement.
noun Property in the form of land; estate.
noun A wide expanse, as of land or other matter. Often used in the plural: "Everything was streaky pink marble and acres of textureless carpeting” (Anne Tyler).

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Century Dictionary (5)

Originally, an open plowed or sowed field. This signification was gradually lost after the acre was made a definite measure of surface. Still used in the plural to denote fields or land in general. My bosky acres, and my unshrubb'd down. Shak., Tempest, iv. Over whose acres walked those blessed feet. Shak., 1 Hen. IV., i. 1.
A superficial measure of land, usually stated to be 40 poles in length by 4 in breadth; but 160 perches (= 4840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet) make an acre, however shaped. An acre, as a specific quantity of land, was reckoned in England as much as a yoke of oxen could plow in a day till the establishment of a definite measure by laws of the thirteenth century and later. This is known in Great Britain and the United States as the statute acre, to distinguish it from the customary acres still in use to some extent in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The Scotch acre is larger than the statute acre, as it contains 6150.4 square yards, 48 Scotch acres being equal to 61 statute acres. The Irish acre is 7840 square yards, 100 Irish acres being nearly equivalent to 162 statute acres. In Wales different measures, the erw, the stang, the paladr, are called acres. The true erw is 4320 square yards; the stang is 3240. There is also the Cornish acre, of 5760 square yards. Among the customary English acres are found measures of the following numbers of perches: 80 (of hops), 90 (of hops), 107, 110, 120 (shut acre), 130, 132, 134, 141, 180 (forest acre), 200 (for copyhold land in Lincolnshire), 212, 256 (of wood). The Leicestershire acre has 2308¾ square yards, the Westmoreland acre 6760 square yards, the Cheshire acre 10,240 square yards. Often abbreviated to A. or adjective The acre was in many cases a small field simply, i. e., an ager; and a hundred and twenty small fields were called a hide. A standard acre was hardly established until the thirteenth century. D. W. Ross, German Land-holding, Notes, p. 131.
A lineal measure equal to a furrow's length, or 40 poles; more frequently, an acre's breadth, 4 poles, equal to 22 or 25 yards.

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We have produced 25-30 quintals of fruit per acre, which is selling at an average price of 20 rupees (approx. half a dollar) per kg. — The News is NowPublic.com - NowPublic.com: The News is Now Public
In the native God's-acre, as in the Communion of the Lord's Table, and in the simple rites which accompanied the burial of the dead in Christ, the heathen saw the one lofty platform of loving self-sacrifice to which the Cross raises all its children Oct. — Life of William Carey
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894 The medićval English acre was a long narrow strip forty rods in length and four rods in width, a half-acre or quarter-acre being of the same length, but of two rods or one rod in width. — An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
We have raised about thirty bushels to the acre, which is very well for sod. — The Master-Knot of Human Fate
There are 67 trees on the acre, which is too many for good nut production. — Northern Nut Growers Association, Report Of The Proceedings At The Tenth Annual Meeting. Battle Creek, Michigan, December 9 and 10, 1919

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expanse · bushel · mile · patch · crop · pound · inch · farm · tract · ton · plantation · pasture

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English aker, field, acre, from Old English æcer; see agro- in Indo-European roots.

Century Dictionary (1)

from Middle English aker, akir, a field, an acre, from Anglo-Saxon æcer, a field, later also an acre, = Old Saxon akkar = OFries. ekker = Dutch akker =Old High German ahhar, achar, accar, Middle High German G. acker=Icelandic akr = Swedish åker = Danish ager = Gothic (Moesogothic) akrs = Latin ager = Greek ἀγρός = Sanskrit ajra, all in the sense of field, orig. a pasture or a chase, hunting-ground; from √ *ag, Sanskrit √ aj = Greek ἂγειν = Latin agere = Icelandic aka, drive: see ake = ache, and (from Latin agere) act, etc. Hence acorn, q. v. The spelling acre instead of the reg. aker (cf. baker, Anglo-Saxon bæcere) is due to its legal use in imitation of Old French acre, from Middle Latin (Law L.) acra, acrum, from Teutonic

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