Yield

How to spell yield

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yield

What does yield mean?

1. verbTo produce or provide a result, profit, or crop.
2. verbTo give way to pressure, force, or another's right of way.
3. nounThe amount or quantity produced, especially of a crop or financial return.

Yield in a sentence

• verb

  These fields yield a heavy harvest every autumn.

• verb

  Drivers must yield to traffic already on the roundabout.

• noun

  This year's wheat yield exceeded the farmer's expectations.

• verb

  The savings account will yield modest interest over the year.

• verb

  The old hinge began to yield under the weight of the door.

• noun

  The bond offers a higher yield than the bank account.

Where does yield come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English verb gieldan, which originally meant 'to pay', 'to repay', or 'to render what is owed', a sense still faintly visible in the modern idea of land that 'pays out' a crop. It traces back to a shared Germanic root, related to the Dutch gelden and the German gelten, 'to be worth' or 'to be valid', and the same family gives German Geld, meaning 'money'. Over the medieval period the meaning broadened from settling a debt to producing or giving forth more generally, and later to the idea of giving way under pressure or surrendering. The spelling holds onto the tricky 'ie' vowel order, which follows the familiar but unreliable rule that 'i' comes before 'e', a sequence that trips up many adult writers. Because the word looks short and simple, its quiet 'ie' trap is easy to reverse into the wrong order.

How the word is built

• yield (from Old English gieldan: to pay, repay, render)