From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Yard \Yard\, noun [OE. yerd, AS. gierd, gyrd, a rod, stick, a measure, a yard; akin to OFries. ierde, OS. gerda, D. garde, G. gerte, OHG. gartia, gerta, gart, Icel. gaddr a goad, sting, Goth. gazds, and probably to L. hasta a spear. Cf. {Gad}, noun, {Gird}, noun, {Gride}, verb (used without an object), {Hastate}.]
1. A rod; a stick; a staff. [Obs.] --P. Plowman.
If men smote it with a yerde. --Chaucer.
The bitter frosts with the sleet and rain Destroyed hath the green in every yerd. --Chaucer.
3. A long piece of timber, as a rafter, etc. [Obs.]
4. A measure of length, equaling three feet, or thirty-six inches, being the standard of English and American measure.
5. The penis.
6. (Naut.) A long piece of timber, nearly cylindrical, tapering toward the ends, and designed to support and extend a square sail. A yard is usually hung by the center to the mast. See Illust. of {Ship}.
7. (Zo["o]l.) A place where moose or deer herd together in winter for pasture, protection, etc. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
{Golden Yard}, or {Yard and Ell} (Astron.), a popular name of the three stars in the belt of Orion.
{Under yard} [i. e., under the rod], under contract. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Yard \Yard\, verb (used with an object) To confine (cattle) to the yard; to shut up, or keep, in a yard; as, to yard cows.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Yard \Yard\, noun [OE. yard, yerd, AS. geard; akin to OFries. garda garden, OS. gardo garden, gard yard, D. gaard garden, G. garten, OHG. garto garden, gari inclosure, Icel. gar[eth]r yard, house, Sw. g[*a]rd, Dan. gaard, Goth. gards a house, garda sheepfold, L. hortus garden, Gr. cho'rtos an inclosure. Cf. {Court}, {Garden}, {Garth}, {Horticulture}, {Orchard}.]
1. An inclosure; usually, a small inclosed place in front of, or around, a house or barn; as, a courtyard; a cowyard; a barnyard.
A yard . . . inclosed all about with sticks In which she had a cock, hight chanticleer. --Chaucer.
2. An inclosure within which any work or business is carried on; as, a dockyard; a shipyard.
{Liberty of the yard}, a liberty, granted to persons imprisoned for debt, of walking in the yard, or within any other limits prescribed by law, on their giving bond not to go beyond those limits.
{Prison yard}, an inclosure about a prison, or attached to it.
{Yard grass} (Bot.), a low-growing grass ({Eleusine Indica}) having digitate spikes. It is common in dooryards, and like places, especially in the Southern United States. Called also {crab grass}.
{Yard of land}. See {Yardland}.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: a unit of length equal to 3 feet; defined as 91.44 centimeters; originally taken to be the average length of a stride [syn: {pace}]
2: the enclosed land around a house or other building; "it was a small house with almost no yard" [syn: {grounds}, {curtilage}]
3: a tract of land enclosed for particular activities (sometimes paved and usually associated with buildings); "they opened a repair yard on the edge of town"
4: an area having a network of railway tracks and sidings for storage and maintenance of cars and engines [syn: {railway yard}]
5: an enclosure for animals (as chicken or livestock)
6: a unit of volume (as for sand or gravel) [syn: {cubic yard}]
7: a long horizontal spar tapered at the end and used to support and spread a square sail or lateen
8: the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100 [syn: {thousand}, {one thousand}, {1000}, {M}, {K}, {chiliad}, {G}, {grand}, {thou}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
186 Moby Thesaurus words for "yard": C, C-note, G, G-note, M, arena, armory, arsenal, assembly line, assembly plant, atomic energy plant, beleaguer, beset, besiege, bindery, blockade, boatyard, boilery, bookbindery, bound, box in, brewery, brickyard, buck, cage, cannery, cartwheel, cent, century, chamber, chiliad, chiliagon, chiliahedron, chiliarch, chiliarchia, cincture, close, close in, compass, confine, contain, container, coop, coop in, coop up, copper, cordon, cordon off, corral, court, courtyard, creamery, curtilage, dairy, defense plant, delimited field, dime, distillery, dockyard, dollar, dollar bill, encircle, enclave, enclose, enclosure, encompass, enshrine, factory, factory belt, factory district, feeder plant, fence in, field, fifty cents, fin, fish, five cents, five hundred dollars, five-dollar bill, five-hundred-dollar bill, five-spot, fiver, flour mill, fold, four bits, frogskin, grand, ground, half G, half a C, half dollar, half grand, hedge in, hem in, house in, hundred-dollar bill, impound, imprison, incarcerate, include, industrial park, industrial zone, iron man, jail, kennel, kilo, kilocycle, kilogram, kilohertz, kiloliter, kilometer, lakh, leaguer, list, main plant, manufactory, manufacturing plant, manufacturing quarter, mew, mew up, mill, millennium, millepede, milligram, milliliter, mint, munitions plant, myriad, nickel, oil refinery, one hundred thousand, packing house, pale, paling, park, pen, pen in, penny, plant, pocket, pottery, power plant, production line, push-button plant, quad, quadrangle, quarantine, quarter, rail in, red cent, refinery, sawbuck, sawmill, shipyard, shrine, shut in, shut up, silver dollar, skin, smacker, square, stable, subassembly plant, sugar refinery, surround, tannery, ten cents, ten thousand, ten-spot, tenner, theater, thou, thousand, thousand dollars, thousand-dollar bill, toft, twenty-dollar bill, twenty-five cents, two bits, two-dollar bill, two-spot, wall in, winery, wrap, yard up, yards
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