acre

Alternative forms

• aker (archaic)
• acer (-er form, chiefly UK)

Etymology

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”), Norwegian and Swedish åker (“field”), Icelandic akur (“field”), Latin ager (“land, field, acre, countryside”), Ancient Greek ἀγρός (agrós, “field”). Related also to acorn.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: āʹkə, IPA^(key): /ˈeɪ.kə/
• (General American) enPR: āʹkər, IPA^(key): /ˈeɪ.kɚ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪkə(ɹ)

Noun

acre (plural acres)

1. An English unit of land area (symbol: a. or ac.) originally denoting a day's plowing for a yoke of oxen, now standardized as 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square meters.
   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎:

     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.

2. Any of various similar units of area in other systems.
3. (informal, usually in the plural) A wide expanse.

   I like my new house - there’s acres of space!

4. (informal, usually in the plural) A large quantity.
5. (obsolete) A field.
6. (obsolete) The acre's breadth by the length, English units of length equal to the statute dimensions of the acre: 22 yds (≈20 m) by 220 yrds (≈200 m).
7. (obsolete) A duel fought between individual Scots and Englishmen in the borderlands.

See also

• international acre
• north forty
• US survey acre
• Weights and measures
• Wikipedia article on the acre

Anagrams

• -care, Care, Cera, Crea, Race, acer, care, e-car, race, race-

Etymology

Probably from Old Norse akr.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /akʁ/

• audio

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

acre f (plural acres)

1. (historical) acre

Further reading

• “acre” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• care
• créa
• race

Etymology

From Latin ācre, neuter nominative singular of ācer (“sharp”). Doublet of agro.

Adjective

acre (masculine and feminine plural acri)

1. sharp, sour
2. harsh

Anagrams

• care
• cera
• c'era
• crea
• reca

Adjective

ācre

1. neuter nominative singular of ācer
2. neuter accusative singular of ācer
3. neuter vocative singular of ācer

References

• acre in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• acre in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• acre in Richard Stillwell et al., editor (1976) The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Noun

acre f (plural acres)

1. (Jersey) acre

Pronunciation

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˈa.kɾɨ/
• Hyphenation: a‧cre

Etymology 1

From Latin ācre, neuter nominative singular of ācer (“sharp”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱrós (“sharp”).

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English acre, from Middle English acre, aker, from Old English æcer, from Proto-Germanic *akraz (“field”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵros (“field”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈa.kre/

Adjective

acre

1. feminine plural nominative of acru
2. feminine plural accusative of acru
3. neuter plural nominative of acru
4. neuter plural accusative of acru

Alternative forms

• aker, acker

Etymology

From Middle English aker, from Old English æcer (“field; acre”). Cognate with English acre; see there for more.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈekər], [ˈjɪkər]
• (South Scots) IPA^(key): [ˈakər], [ˈɛkər]

Noun

acre (plural acres)

1. An acre (unit of measurement)

Verb

acre (third-person singular present acres, present participle acrin, past acrit, past participle acrit)

1. To let grain crops be harvested at a stated sum per acre.
2. To be employed in harvesting grain crops at a stated sum per acre.

References

• Eagle, Andy, ed. (2016) The Online Scots Dictionary, Scots Online.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈakɾe/

Etymology 1

From Latin acer, acre. Cf. also agrio.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English acre. Doublet of agro.

Anagrams

• arce, crea, cera, caer

Further reading

• “acre” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.