Acre
Pronunciation
- UK enPR: ÄʹkÉ™, IPA: /ˈeɪ.kÉ™/
- US enPR: ÄʹkÉ™r, IPA: /ˈeɪ.kÉš/
- Rhymes: -eɪkə(r)
Alternative forms
- aker archaic
Origin
From Middle English acre, aker, from Old English æcer ("a field, land, that which is sown, sown land, cultivated land; a definite quantitiy of land, land which a yoke of oxen could plough in a day, an acre, a certain quantity of land, strip of plough-land; crop"), from Proto-Germanic *akraz ("field"), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵros ("field"). Cognate with Scots acre, aker, acker ("acre, field, arable land"), North Frisian ecir ("field, a measure of land"), West Frisian eker ("field"), Dutch akker ("field"), German Acker ("field, acre"), Swedish Ã¥ker ("field"), Icelandic akur ("field"), Latin ager ("land, field, acre, countryside"), Ancient Greek ἀγÏός (agros, "field"). Related also to acorn.
Full definition of acre
Noun
acre
(plural acres)- (obsolete) A field.
- A unit of surface area (symbol a. or ac.), originally as much as a yoke of oxen could plough in a day; later defined as an area 1 chain (22 yd) by 1 furlong (220 yd), or 4,840 square yards. Equivalent to about 4,046.86 square metres.
- 2006, w, Internal Combustion Chapter 2, Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.
- (in the plural, informal) A large amount (of area).I like my new house - there’s acres of space!