![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordhide (HAID) - n., an old English unit of land area usually equal to 120 acres (49 hectares) but varying over time.
Traditionally defined as the amount of land necessary to support a peasant farmer family, but in practice was actually used for tax assessment: the amount of land that could produce £1 of income a year. Actual size varied from as low as 60 ac (24 ha) up to the modern standard (not that it's actually used any more) of 120. The term has nothing whatsoever to do with the hide of an ox or any other beast: it's from Old English Old English hīd, short form of hīgid, from earlier *hīwid, the amount of land needed to support one family, from hiwan, family, from Germanic and thence PIE root *ḱey-, to lie with/be familiar, which also gave us Latin cīvis, citizen.
---L.
Traditionally defined as the amount of land necessary to support a peasant farmer family, but in practice was actually used for tax assessment: the amount of land that could produce £1 of income a year. Actual size varied from as low as 60 ac (24 ha) up to the modern standard (not that it's actually used any more) of 120. The term has nothing whatsoever to do with the hide of an ox or any other beast: it's from Old English Old English hīd, short form of hīgid, from earlier *hīwid, the amount of land needed to support one family, from hiwan, family, from Germanic and thence PIE root *ḱey-, to lie with/be familiar, which also gave us Latin cīvis, citizen.
---L.
