Backyard

How to spell backyard

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce backyard

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does backyard mean?

1. nounThe area of ground directly behind a house, often enclosed.
2. nounAn area close to where one lives, treated as one's immediate neighbourhood or domain.

Backyard in a sentence

• The children played in the backyard until it grew dark.

• Residents objected to a waste plant being built in their own backyard.

• We built a small deck in the backyard over the summer.

• The company expanded into a market right in its competitor's backyard.

Where does backyard come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound of two very old native English words. 'Back' comes from the Old English 'baec', meaning the rear part of the body or of anything, while 'yard' descends from the Old English 'geard', meaning an enclosure, fence, or piece of fenced ground around a dwelling. That 'geard' is closely related to words for enclosed spaces in other Germanic languages and shares deep roots with the idea of a girdle or girding, that is, something that encircles. The combined term 'backyard' arose in modern English, taking firm hold in American usage during the 1600s and 1700s to name the open ground behind a house. Because both halves are common everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises; the only thing to remember is that it is written as one solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• back (rear)
• yard (enclosed ground beside a building)