acre

acre — noun

1. a standard unit for measuring land area, used especially in Britain and the US,

1.nounC2
Definition

a standard unit for measuring land area, used especially in Britain and the US, equal to about 4,047 square metres.

Example

The farmer bought ten acres beside the river for apple trees.

number + acres for total land area

Our school rents two acres behind the gym for sports day.

Common collocations
  • an acre of land
  • half an acre
  • ten acres
  • per acre
  • cover acres
Synonyms
  • hectare

    a metric land unit; one hectare is much larger than one acre

  • square metre

    a much smaller metric unit used for exact measurement

  • square yard

    a smaller traditional unit; 4,840 square yards equal one acre

Grammar Patterns

one acre

ten acres

half an acre

an acre of land

per acre

Usage Note

Usually used for outdoor land such as farms, fields, parks, or building sites, not for rooms inside a building. After numbers above one, use the plural 'acres'; after 'half', the usual pattern is 'half an acre'.

Common Mistakes

The farm is 20 acre big.
The farm is 20 acres big.
use the plural form after numbers above one.
The garden covers half acre.
The garden covers half an acre.
the usual pattern is 'half an acre', with the article.

Word family

  • acreage
    nounC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

'Acre' is a traditional unit for measuring land, especially in Britain and the United States. 'Hectare' is the metric choice and is used more often in international reports, farming statistics, and maps; one hectare equals about 2.47 acres. 'Square metre' is much smaller, so it fits gardens, rooms, and small building plots better than large fields. 'Square mile' is far larger and is used for cities, lakes, or whole regions rather than single farms. In everyday use, 'acre' often sounds practical and local: people talk about a ten-acre farm or land sold by the acre. A farmer may buy twenty acres, but a government report is more likely to describe the same land in hectares.

acre ↗hectare ↗square metresquare mile

Common collocations

Nouns

  • acre of land
  • acre of farmland
  • acre of forest

Phrases

  • an acre of land
  • half an acre
  • sold by the acre

Prepositions

  • per acre

Etymology

Old EnglishMiddle EnglishModern English

'Acre' comes from Old English 'aecer', which first meant an open field or a piece of cultivated land. Over time, the word narrowed from the general idea of farmland to a fixed way of measuring it. Historically, it was linked to the amount of land a team could plough in a day, but in modern use it is simply a standard land measure.