yards

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of yard.

   The new fence ran for several hundred yards along the edge of the field.

   The row houses had narrow yards leading down toward the canal.

   Note

   One spelling serves several plurals. Yards counts lengths of three feet, and it also gathers enclosed grounds, from a farm's working yards to the lawned property around a North American or Australian house. After a number the measure stays plural (four hundred yards), but the -s drops when the measure describes a noun, as in a hundred-yard dash. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present form.

2. 2
   nounplural

   The complete sailing rig of a ship, considered as a whole.

   The captain ordered the yards braced sharply so the ship could sail closer to the wind.

   Restorers spent months rebuilding the schooner's yards before she could sail again.

   Similarrigging, rig

   Note

   A sailor's collective that exists only in the plural and always takes a plural verb: her yards were bare, never her yards was. The word names the whole rig as one system. A crew braces or rebuilds the yards together, without singling any out. Ships are usually her in this nautical register, and the possessive often comes with the word.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of yard.

   The herder yards the animals at the first sign of a blizzard.

   A skidder yards the logs out of the forest to the landing.

   Note

   The verb behind this form has two quite different uses. Usually it is transitive and takes the animals as its object: a farmer yards the stock before a storm. Its humorous intransitive use plays on the unit of length, so someone who yards along covers ground a yard at a time instead of inching forward. Only a singular subject takes this -s form.

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