- garth
- "small piece of enclosed ground," northern and western Eng. dialect word, mid-14c., from O.N. garšr "yard, courtyard, fence," cognate of O.E. geard (see yard (1)).
- yard (1)
- "ground around a house," O.E. geard "enclosure, garden, court, house, yard," from P.Gmc. *garda (cf. O.N. garšr "enclosure, garden, yard;" O.Fris. garda, Du. gaard, O.H.G. garto, Ger. Garten "garden;" Goth. gards "house," garda "stall"), from PIE *gharto-, from base *gher- "to grasp, enclose" (cf. O.E. gyrdan "to gird," Skt. ghra- "house," Alb. garth "hedge," L. hortus "garden," Phrygian -gordum "town," Gk. khortos "pasture," O.Ir. gort "field," Bret. garz "enclosure, garden," and second element in L. cohors "enclosure, yard, company of soldiers, multitude"). Lith. gardas "pen, enclosure," O.C.S. gradu "town, city," and Rus. gorod, -grad "town, city" belong to this group, but linguists dispute whether they are independent developments or borrowings from Gmc. Yard sale is attested by 1976. M.E. yerd "yard-land" (c.1450) was a measure of about 30 acres. Yardbird "convict" is 1956, from the notion of prison yards; earlier it meant "basic trainee" (World War II armed forces slang).