> To add to this thread, is an apiary a bee yard or a beeyard?  There's no beeyard or bee-yard in Webster's...
> Neither.  An apiary is an apiary, a yard is either a paved area or a unit of measure


Oof. That's a rather restrictive definition of the word "yard." Here in the USA, bee yard is the more common term. Hardly anyone knows what apiary means (a place where apes are kept?)

The origin of the word yard goes way back. It appears in Beowulf: "Nis þær hearpan sweg, gomen in geardum." 

Later usage includes: 1524 "A litile howse with a yerde." 1550 "I kepe doggis to aide me in my yarde." 1711 "As I was walking..in the great Yard that belongs to my Friend's Country House." 

1817 Rob Roy II. xii. 242,   "I wandered from one quadrangle of old-fashioned buildings to another, and from thence to the College-yards, or walking-ground."

Modern terms such as yard, garden, orchard, vineyard, etc. share the same root.

Old Saxon gard enclosure, field, dwelling, Middle Dutch, Dutch gaard garden, Old High German gart circle, ring, Old Norse garðr garth. Swedish gård yard, Danish gard yard, farm.

Old English geard is the second element of middangeard middenerd n., ortgeard orchard n., wíngeard winyard, etc.

source: the Oxford English Dictionary

PLB

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