The green table is in the yard
long and square
7 Answers
What sort of yard? Only Americans have yards, the rest of us have back yards, gardens, stable yards.. concrete yards, mostly, not that nice..
The stable yard? La cuadra.
The garden? el jardín
on the terrace ? el patio o la terraza
Merely by the way, "long and square" is possible attributively, if not overly persuasive for, say, a table. The long, for instance, might be the speaker referring to the length of the side, then adding that the overall shape of the area is square.
A: That pasture you have up for sale--is that the one that borders Sam's place?
B: Yep.
A: How long on that side? Quarter of a mile?
B: Yep.
A: And what's the lay of it? Square like all the old plat parcels in this neck of the woods?
B: Yep.
A: Long and square then?
B: Yep.
A: Been running steers there?
B: Yep.
A: They do all right?
B: Yep.
A: And you are asking $40,000 for it? That is a piece of change.
B: Yep.
Long and square is impossable. A rectangle can be long but a square can only be big or small not long or short.
By the way thanks for letting us know where the table is.
José, no se busca más por la mesa verde, le encontró en el patio. Es larga y rectangla.
Also the ancient Greeks, who invented geometry, and classified squares as a kind of rectangle, would be very surprised to hear that only rectangles may be long, while all squares are merely big or small.
Length and long are two different things. Long is relative while length is quantifie
1 mile in length. A long walk. Also long can not exist without short because it is relative. When talking about inches a mile is long but compared to a light-year a mile is extremly short. A mile by its self is not long or short.
Long rectangle. What is the comparison for long to exist when you only have the rectangle? Answer, the short sides of the rectangle. In other words the ratio between the long sides and the short sides determine whether or not the rectangle is long or short.
Long square? Only having the square as a reference a square has neither long nor short sides because they are all equal. A square by its self can neither be long or short like a mile by its self.
You can say that the square table is longer than the rectangular table but by its self it can only be big or small and that changes with the perspective of what is considered normal.
Also, draw a rectangle using red for the long sides and blue for the short sides. Easy you have a red and blue rectangle. Now draw a square using red for the long sides and blue for the short sides. Extremely difficult, it is impossable because I did not give a color for equal only long and short.
The ancient greeks could probably explain it better than I have.
If you want to say the long square or circle go for it, it's not my problem. You can also say "What piece of pie do you want?" instead of "Which piece of pie do you want?".
Enough of this, time for Spanish.
From the Online Etymological Dictionary, which is quite good as these things go:
YARD (1)
"ground around a house," Old English geard "enclosure, garden, court, house, yard," from Proto-Germanic *garda (cf. Old Norse garðr "enclosure, garden, yard;" Old Frisian garda, Dutch gaard, Old High German garto, German Garten "garden;" Gothic gards "house," garda "stall"), from PIE *gharto-, from root *gher- "to grasp, enclose" (cf. Old English gyrdan "to gird," Sanskrit ghra- "house," Albanian garth "hedge," Latin hortus "garden," Phrygian -gordum "town," Greek khortos "pasture," Old Irish gort "field," Breton garz "enclosure, garden," and second element in Latin cohors "enclosure, yard, company of soldiers, multitude").
Lithuanian gardas "pen, enclosure," Old Church Slavonic gradu "town, city," and Russian gorod, -grad "town, city" belong to this group, but linguists dispute whether they are independent developments or borrowings from Germanic. Yard sale is attested by 1976. Middle English yerd "yard-land" (mid-15c.) was a measure of about 30 acres.
YARD 2:
measure of length, Old English gerd (Mercian), gierd (West Saxon) "rod, stick, measure of length," from West Germanic *gazdijo, from Proto-Germanic *gazdaz "stick, rod" (cf. Old Saxon gerda, Old Frisian ierde, Dutch gard "rod;" Old High German garta, German gerte "switch, twig," Old Norse gaddr "spike, sting, nail"), from PIE *gherdh- "staff, pole" (cf. Latin hasta "shaft, staff"). The nautical yardarm retains the original sense of "stick."
Originally in Anglo-Saxon times a land measure of roughly 5 meters (a length later called rod, pole, or perch). Modern measure of "three feet" is attested from late 14c. (earlier rough equivalent was the ell of 45 inches, and the verge). In Middle English, the word also was a euphemism for "penis" (cf. "Love's Labour's Lost," V.ii.676). Slang meaning "one hundred dollars" first attested 1926, American English.
En el trasero la floja mesa verde de la hierba....
[EAC]
