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Today, an acre is generally considered to be a unit of land measuring 43,560 square feet (4,047 square meters). Before that standard was set, it's believed that an acre represented a rougher measurement: the amount of land that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen. Both acre and agrarian derive from the Latin noun ager and the Greek noun agrós, meaning "piece of land, field." (You can probably guess that agriculture is another descendant.) Agrarian, first used in English in the 16th century, describes things pertaining to the cultivation of fields, as well as the farmers who cultivate them.

Examples of agrarian in a Sentence

Adjective a town founded in 1811 as an agrarian community

Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective The agrarian and cultural microcosm of Napa Valley is at forefront of climate change concerns. — Stephan Rabimov, Forbes, 7 May 2022 In the wake of that catastrophe, settlers in the Central Valley began building their agrarian paradise. — Susie Cagle, Wired, 12 Apr. 2022 Such executions were common in Democratic Kampuchea, as the Khmer Rouge renamed the country, where an agrarian utopia was to replace a decadent capitalism. — New York Times, 16 Mar. 2022 Throughout Ukraine’s agrarian steppes, kulaks protested wildly. — Longreads, 2 Mar. 2022 In its new findings, Citizen Lab found that Michal Kolodziejczak, a 33-year-old farmer and agrarian social movement leader was hacked several times in May 2019. — Vanessa Gera, ajc, 25 Jan. 2022 As many calendars, too: lunar, fiscal, academic, religious, civil, agrarian, Gregorian. — New York Times, 15 Sep. 2021 One occurred in 7176 B.C., as nomadic hunter-gatherer societies gave way to agrarian settlements, and the other did so in 5259 B.C., as the planet emerged from the final throes of its latest ice age. — Jonathan O'callaghan, Scientific American, 13 Sep. 2021 Authorities estimate overall economic losses at nearly 90 billion yuan ($14 billion), a devastating blow to the province's heavily agrarian economy. — Dake Kang, Star Tribune, 29 July 2021 Recent Examples on the Web: Noun The writer-agrarian-soil conservationist founded Malabar Farm in Mansfield. — Marc Bona, cleveland, 7 Dec. 2020 Closing the forts frustrated foreclosure proceedings; moreover, for Shay’s enraged agrarians, the courts were a tangible symbol of the eastern moneyed interest and of a government unresponsive to their needs. — Thomas Wendel, National Review, 4 July 2019 Southern agrarians disdained capitalism; Peter Viereck spent his time lecturing Americans on the virtues of Metternich and that great homegrown Tory, FDR. — Richard Brookhiser, National Review, 4 June 2019 There are the populares of Ancient Rome, the agrarians of nineteenth-century Wisconsin, and the Peronists of twentieth-century Argentina. — Yascha Mounk, New Republic, 19 July 2017 Jefferson, an agrarian, generally opposed a strong central government. — Jonathan W. White, Smithsonian, 17 Mar. 2017 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'agrarian.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.