Etymology

steelyard

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Today it means: A transportable balance with unequal arm lengths. Full definition →

Dutch staalhof ← Middle Low German Stalhof
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The story

  1. Middle Low German · calque ofStalhof
  2. Dutch · calque ofstaalhof
  3. English todaysteelyard

From steel + yard (“enclosed area, rod”). The sense of “place” is a calque of Dutch staalhof or Middle Low German Stalhof (Modern Dutch staal (“steel”) + hof (“court, yard”)). The sense of “balance” is presumably from the sense of “place”, originally “steelyard beam”, mixed with additional sense of “rod” (hence “rod for weighing steel”), replacing earlier Latin statēra.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.