Note 500 — Chapter VI · ‘Nicknames.’
Reading edition
I need not stay to point out the early familiar use of ‘yard’ as a stick or staff of any length. In Wicklyffe’s New Testament we find the following:—‘And he seide to hem nothing take ye in the weye—neither yerde, ne scrippe, neither breed, ne money.’ (Luke ix. 3.) Our Authorized Version still preserves the meteyard from obsoletism: ‘Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.’ (Lev. xix. 35.)