The Etymology of Courtyard
Courtyard is one of those English compounds whose two halves quietly mean the same thing. Court is from Old French cort, from Latin cohors — a Roman military term that originally meant an enclosure or yard, and from there extended to the group of soldiers stationed in such an enclosure (a cohort), and then to a sovereign’s retinue, and finally to a tribunal that met in a royal court. Yard is from Old English geard, an enclosed piece of ground, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵher- meaning to enclose — the same root that gives English garden, girdle, and the German Garten. Both court and yard, then, descend independently from the same Indo-European meaning. When English speakers in the 16th century compounded them into courtyard, they were unwittingly stacking two synonyms — an enclosure-enclosure. The word filled a useful niche: an enclosed open space within a building, distinct from a back yard or front yard. Mediterranean architectural traditions made courtyards central to domestic life; the word in English describes them precisely.