arpent
Americannoun
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arpents
plural
noun
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a former French unit of length equal to 190 feet (approximately 58 metres)
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an old French unit of land area equal to about one acre: still used in Quebec and Louisiana
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of arpent
1570–80; < Middle French < Latin arepennis half-acre < Gaulish; akin to MIr airchenn unit of area
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The lineal arpent was the equivalent of one hundred and ninety-two English feet.
From The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism by William Bennett Munro
An arpent of land was 180 French feet square.
From The Winning of the West, Volume 1 From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 by Theodore Roosevelt
The wheat was invariably spring-sown, and the yield averaged from eight to twelve hundredweights per arpent, or from ten to fourteen bushels per acre.
From Crusaders of New France A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness Chronicles of America, Volume 4 by William Bennett Munro
French farms were measured by the arpent and were staked out in long and narrow oblongs.
From The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton by William Charles Henry Wood
An arpent rents at from twenty to sixty livres.
From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph
Stengel's critique neatly encapsulates a view that has remained unchanged since Voltaire dismissed North America as "a few arpents of snow."
From Time Magazine Archive
The 1681 census discloses that Jean and Marguerite owned two guns, their 30 arpents, eight cattle, and had four children at home.
From Time Magazine Archive
Monrachet contains about fifty arpents, and produces, one year with another, about one hundred and twenty pieces.
From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph
The ground in the rear belongs to the general government, to the depth of forty arpents, and can be used for the benefit of the troops.
From Norman's New Orleans and Environs Containing a Brief Historical Sketch of the Territory and State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by B. M. Norman
A Governor's Secretary, a Judge's nephew, or some Clerk of Records was entitled to at least a thousand acres; the Governor's cook to 700 arpents.
From The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation Volume 1 by Charles Roger
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
