“Acre” is an Anglo-Saxon word that means, literally, the amount of land plowable in one day. The term was used before the tenth century, the acre originally referring to the area that could be plowed by a yoke of oxen in one day. The actual footage of the acre varied from region to region.
In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Edward l and Edward lll tried to codify English measurements. Although the quantity of land that could be plowed in one day was obviously variable, depending upon such factors as the durability of the animals pulling the plow, the plowing equipment, and the topography of the land, there were obvious advantages to standardization. By the reign of Henry Vlll, there was universal agreement that an acre should be 40 poles long by 4 poles wide (or 160 square rods). These nice round units of measurement (1 rod=16.5 feet; one pole =one square rod), popular in agricultural societies, translate exactly to our current standard of the acre as 43,560 square feet. With modern machinery, any farmer can plow considerably more than one acre in a day, but the acre has proved to be an enduring unit of measurement.
