3 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

acre

noun

1: a unit of area (4840 square yards) used in English-speaking countries

2: a territory of western Brazil bordering on Bolivia and Peru

3: a town and port in northwestern Israel in the eastern Mediterranean [syn: {Akko}, {Akka}, {Accho}]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Acre \A"cre\, noun [OE. aker, AS. [ae]cer; akin to OS. accar, OHG. achar, Ger. acker, Icel. akr, Sw. [*a]ker, Dan. ager, Goth. akrs, L. ager, Gr. ?, Skr. ajra. [root]2, 206.]

1. Any field of arable or pasture land. [Obs.]

2. A piece of land, containing 160 square rods, or 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet. This is the English statute acre. That of the United States is the same. The Scotch acre was about 1.26 of the English, and the Irish 1.62 of the English.

Note: The acre was limited to its present definite quantity by statutes of Edward I., Edward III., and Henry VIII.

{Broad acres}, many acres, much landed estate. [Rhetorical]

{God's acre}, God's field; the churchyard.

I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial ground, God's acre. --Longfellow.

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

Acre is the translation of a word (tse'med), which properly means a yoke, and denotes a space of ground that may be ploughed by a yoke of oxen in a day. It is about an acre of our measure (Isa. 5:10; 1 Sam. 14:14).
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