acre
Pluralacres
- 1An English unit of land area, originally a day's plowing for a team of oxen, now fixed at 4,840 square yards, or about 4,046.86 square meters.
The new park will cover a single acre in the city center.
Surveyors measured the field at just over three acres.
Note
The measured sense grew out of a much older word for a field: Old English æcer meant "field where crops are grown," and the root behind it meant simply "field." It is abbreviated a. or ac. The usual plural is acres, but British colloquial speech also leaves it unchanged after a number (three acre). That usage is worth recognizing but not copying in formal writing.
- 2A broad, open expanse of space or surface.
Beyond the fence stretched an acre of untouched marshland.
The gallery's white walls framed acres of bare floor.
Similarexpanse, stretch, tract, sweep
Note
Exaggeration turns the unit into a way of saying "lots of room," and it nearly always comes in the plural: acres of space, acres of floor. Speech often treats the phrase as one mass, so there's acres of space sounds natural despite the plural noun. It belongs to conversation. In careful prose, plenty of room or a wide expanse does the same job.
- 3A large amount or great number of something.
The promotion brought acres of new responsibility she hadn't expected.
She insisted there was still an acre of work to finish before dawn.
Similarmountain, heap, ton, load, pile
Note
This meaning shares the plural habit of the "wide expanse" meaning but moves from space to amount: acres of time, acres of paperwork. The expanse sense still pictures ground. This one has left the field entirely and simply means a great deal, often of something abstract. Keep it for conversation and light writing.
- 4Any of several comparable units of land area used in measuring systems other than the English one.
A Scottish acre covered more ground than its English counterpart.
Old deeds sometimes record land in local acres that differ from the modern standard.
- 5A historical unit of land area used in the Chester area, equal to 10,240 square yards, or four quarters.
A farmer near Chester might plow an acre that dwarfed the standard English plot.
Medieval rolls valued the manor at several acres under the larger Chester measure.
Note
Chester's own measure was a large one. At 10,240 square yards it is a little more than twice the statute acre, and each of its four quarters comes to 2,560 square yards. Because the two units share a name, an acre in an old Chester record cannot be read as a modern acre. The figure has to be converted before it says anything about the land today.
Less common meanings
- 6A field; a piece of open or plowed farmland.
Note
This is the oldest meaning, the one closest to the Old English word behind the measured acre. Here an acre is a piece of cultivated land itself, not a quantity of it. It survives only in older texts. A reader who meets it there should picture a whole field rather than a measured area. Today's writers simply say field.
- 7Either of two old English units of length, the breadth of an acre (22 yards) or its length (220 yards).
The field ran an acre's breadth along the lane and an acre's length toward the river.
Each plowed strip stretched a full acre's length before the headland.
Note
These two lengths come from the shape of the statute acre, a long strip ten times as long as it is wide. It measures 22 yards across and 220 yards along, and 22 × 220 gives the 4,840 square yards of the standard acre. The longer measure is the furlong under another name. Both are obsolete as units and turn up only in phrases like an acre's breadth.
- 8A duel fought between an individual Scot and an Englishman in the border country.
Note
This word comes from border fighting and has nothing to do with measuring land. Here an acre is a fight between one Scot and one Englishman. It is obsolete and appears only in older writing about the frontier. There, the context of combatants and a challenge shows that it cannot mean ground. A modern writer would say duel or single combat.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English acre, from Old English æcer ("field where crops are grown"), tracing back through Proto-Germanic *akraz ("field") to the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂éǵros ("field"). It is related to Dutch akker, German Acker, Latin ager, and Ancient Greek ἀγρός (agrós), all meaning "field."