Acre

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈeɪ.kə/

Definitions

1. A unit of land measurement equal to 43,560 square feet, commonly used in real estate and agriculture
2. A measurement of land area equivalent to 43,560 square feet that is frequently utilized in agriculture and real estate transactions
3. This unit of area, commonly equal to 43,560 square feet, serves as a standard in both farming and property assessment

Etymology: The most striking thing about "acre" is that for most of its history it meant simply "field," with no fixed size at all. The Old English "æcer" referred to any cultivated or open tract of land, and the measurement sense only arrived later, as the word came to name a standard plot that could be worked by a team in a day. Its roots reach back to a prehistoric word for a field that also gave Latin "ager," meaning land or countryside, and Greek "agros," meaning a field. The English word "agriculture" is a doublet of "acre," the two having split from the same ancestor and taken different routes into English. The word passed through Middle English as "aker" and "acre" before settling into its modern spelling. Its German cousin "Acker" still means both "field" and "acre," and Dutch "akker" and Swedish "åker" keep the older sense of a plain cultivated field, showing how closely the measurement grew out of farmland itself.

Synonyms: plot, parcel, tract