Area
- Acre
- area of land one chain (four rods) in width by one furlong in length. As the traditional furlong could vary in length from country to country, so did the acre. In England an acre was 4,840 square yards, in Scotland 6,150 square yards and in Ireland 7,840 square yards. It is a Saxon unit, meaning field. Traditionally said to be "as much area as could be ploughed in one day".
- Rood
- one quarter of an acre, confusingly sometimes called an acre itself in many ancient contexts. One furlong in length by one rod in width, or 40 square rods.
- Carucate
- an area equal to that which can be ploughed by one eight-oxen team in a single year (also called a plough or carve). Approximately 120 acres.
- Bovate
- the amount of land one ox can plough in a single year (also called an oxgate). Approximately 15 acres or one eighth of a carucate.
- Perch
- an area equal to one square rod. (See also perch as a length and volume unit.)
- Virgate
- the amount of land a pair of oxen can plough in a single year. Approximately 30 acres (also called yard land).
Read more about this topic: English Units
Famous quotes containing the word area:
“I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The area [of toilet training] is one where a child really does possess the power to defy. Strong pressure leads to a powerful struggle. The issue then is not toilet training but who holds the reins—mother or child? And the child has most of the ammunition!”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)