- yard
-
a traditional unit of distance equal to 3 feet or 36 inches. The yard was
established after the Norman conquest of 1066 by King Henry I who decreed that
the yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of his
outstretched finger, thus defining the yard as exactly 1/2 fathom. Today,
one yard is equal to exactly 91.44 centimeters or 0.9144 meter; this definition
was adopted in the U.S. in 1959 and in Britain by the Weights and Measures Act
of 1963.
-
a cubic yard (about 764.555 liters) sometimes is called yard in bulk
commodities like sand or topsoil.
- yard of ale
-
a traditional Scottish measure of volume, roughly 2.5 pints(1.4 liters)
in a slender, yard-tall glass.
- yard of land, yardland
-
one of several traditional units of area in England, sometimes meant a virgate
(roughly 30 acres) and sometimes a rood (1/4 acre).
- year
-
a unit of time, defined as the period of time for the Earth to make one
revolution around the Sun, the interval between two arrivals of the Sun at the
Tropic of Capricorn, marking the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and
the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, also called tropical year
. There are 365.242 199 days in a tropical year.
-
a traditional unit of time usually equal to 365 or 366 days. If we use 365 as
the number of days in every calendar year, the extra 0.242 day adds up and
causes every fourth year should have an extra day, or 366 days. The longer year
is called a leap year. In the Julian calendar,
four years equal exactly 1461 days, so the average Julian year
is atcually 365.25 days.
- yocto-
-
a metric prefix denoting 10-24 (one septillionth), the prefix is
derived from the Latin octo and Greek okto , meaning
8, for the eighth prefix (n = 8 in 10-3n ) in the SI system of
metric prefixes.
- yoke
-
another name for a pair. The yoke is used for teams of animals, especially
oxen, used to pull wagons.
- yotta-
-
a metric prefix denoting 1024 (one septillion), the prefix was
coined to parallel the prefix yocto-.
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