residents to envision an acre is as a rectangle measuring 88 yards by 55 yards ( of 880 yards by of 880 yards), about the size of a standard American football field. To be more exact, one acre is 90.75% of a 100-yd-long by 53.33-yd-wide American football field (without the end zone). The full field, including the end zones, covers about . For residents of other countries, the acre might be envisioned as rather more than half of a football pitch. It may also be remembered as 1% short of 44,000 square feet. Historical origin The word acre is derived from Old English originally meaning "open field", cognate with west coast Norwegian , Icelandic , Swedish , German , Dutch , Latin , Sanskrit , and Greek (). In English, an obsolete variant spelling was aker. According to the Act on the Composition of Yards and Perches, dating from around 1300, an acre is "40 perches [rods] in length and four in breadth", meaning 220 yards by 22 yards. As detailed in the box on the right, an acre was roughly the amount of land tillable by a yoke of oxen in one day. Before the enactment of the metric system, many countries in Europe used their own official acres. In France, the was used only in Normandy (and neighbouring places outside its traditional borders), but its value varied greatly across Normandy, ranging from 3,632 to 9,725 square metres, with 8,172 square metres being the most frequent value. But inside the same of Normandy, for instance in pays de Caux, the farmers (still in the 20th century) made the difference between the (68 ares, 66 centiares) and the (56 to 65 ca). The Normandy was usually divided in 4 (roods) and 160 square , like the English acre. The Normandy was equal to 1.6 , the unit of area more commonly used in Northern France outside of Normandy. In Canada, the Paris used in Quebec before the metric system was adopted is sometimes called "French acre" in English, even though the Paris and the Normandy were two very different units of area in ancient France (the Paris became the unit of area of French Canada, whereas the Normandy was never used in French Canada). The German word for acre is . There were many variants of the , differing between the different German territories: Statutory values for the acre were