Other forms: acres
An acre is a unit of land about the size of a football pitch. Ten acres, an acre of woodland, sold by the acre.
It was defined as the land one man with one ox could plough in a day, which is why it is a long thin shape rather than a square: turning the plough was the slow part. It is still the working unit of farmland in Britain and America.
1nounacreA unit of land about the size of a football pitch.
“They bought a small farmhouse with an acre of land and an orchard.”
acre is a measure.
Old English aecer meant a field, from a Germanic root. Latin ager and Greek agros are relatives.
Middle English
aker
English, today
acre
From Middle English aker. From Middle English acre, aker, from Old English æcer (“field where crops are grown”), from Proto-West Germanic akr, from Proto-Germanic akraz (“field”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂éǵros (“field”). a doublet of agriculture. Cognate with Scots acre, aker, acker (“acre, field, arable land”), frr ecir (“field, a measure of land”), West Frisian eker (“field”), Dutch akker (“field”), German Acker (“field, acre”), Norwegian åker (“field”) and Swedish åker (“field”), Icelandic akur (“field”), Latin ager (“land, field, acre, countryside”), Ancient Greek ἀγρός (“field”), Sanskrit अज्र (“field, plain”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA