Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles

The yard was a measure of length of 36 inches or three feet for land and sometimes 37 inches for cloth, according to Zupko, the latter resulting from placing the thumb on the cloth and starting the next yard from the other side of the thumb. This measure was known as the tailor's yard. The Middle English Dictionary therefore also gives as compounds 'brodyerd', the double yard used as the standard measurement for the width of broadcloth; and 'taillour(es)yerd', a yard as measured by a tailor, 36 or 37 inches, and cites references for this last to the early 15th century. Generally it was equal to 4/5 …

A continuous strand produced by spinning short fibres together. The term has been in use since at least the tenth century. Same as thread. Gale R. Owen-CrockerBibliographyThe Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project s. v. yarn http://lexissearch.arts.manchester.ac.uk/entry.aspx?id=5337 accessed 28 December 2020.