Meaning & use
a yardstick
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Meanings
nouncountablefigurative
A standard or measure used to judge how good, successful, or valuable something is.
Grammar: Often followed by 'for' or 'by which': use it as a yardstick for quality.
Patterns
- a yardstick for something
- a yardstick by which to judge something
- use something as a yardstick
Test scores are only one yardstick for measuring a school's success.
Profit is a poor yardstick by which to judge a company's true value.
Many critics treat that novel as the yardstick for modern detective fiction.
nouncountable
A stick that is exactly one yard (three feet) long, used for measuring length.
Grammar: Countable and physical: you can hold a yardstick, but you cannot hold the figurative one.
Patterns
- measure something with a yardstick
- a wooden yardstick
The tailor laid a yardstick along the cloth before cutting it.
In the old workshop, a wooden yardstick hung beside the door.
Word forms
| plural | yardsticks |
|---|
Common combinations
- use something as a yardstick
- Teachers often use last year's results as a yardstick.
- a yardstick for success
- Salary is not the only yardstick for success.
- a yardstick of quality
- Customers treat the brand as a yardstick of quality.
- measure something by a yardstick
- We should not measure happiness by a single yardstick.
- a good yardstick
- Response time is a good yardstick for website performance.
Synonyms and how they differ
- standard
- More general and neutral; 'standard' names the rule or level itself, while 'yardstick' stresses the tool you compare things against.
- benchmark
- Common in business and testing; it usually refers to a measured point of comparison, whereas 'yardstick' can be any basis for judgment.
- criterion
- More formal and often used in academic writing; a criterion is a principle for judging, not a physical or figurative measuring stick.
Word family
Commonly confused: a yardstick or yard arm?
a yardstick vs yard arm
A 'yardarm' is a horizontal spar on a ship's mast, not a measuring stick; the spelling and meaning are completely different.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'yardstick' in its most common modern sense?
Choose one answer.
'A useful yardstick for comparing students' means a standard of judgment, the figurative sense that dominates today. The other options all describe a physical measuring stick.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a yardstick”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.