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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
yardstick
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
use
▪ Always use the appropriate yardstick for each category.
▪ But root bearding was minimal-and this is what most growers would use as a yardstick.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Many teachers say the primary school tests are not a useful educational yardstick.
▪ The hospital has developed a treatment for cancer which has become the yardstick for all other treatments.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I have only one yardstick for a good, loving relationship: does it allow both people to grow and flourish?
▪ If this yardstick was right then, it is right now.
▪ It is also most helpful in providing a yardstick for proper administration against which the resolution of problems can be measured.
▪ No yardstick for the mediocre companies to strive to.
▪ Sampling the standards Standards proposed for California students are lengthy and detailed, containing dozens of yardsticks for each grade.
▪ Surely the role of idealism is as a motivating aspiration and a yardstick.
▪ The criteria in quality assurance are the yardsticks, the predetermined elements against which service or the dietetic objectives can be compared.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Yardstick

Yardstick \Yard"stick`\, n. A stick three feet, or a yard, in length, used as a measure of cloth, etc.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
yardstick

also yard-stick, 1797, from yard (n.2) + stick (n.).

Wiktionary
yardstick

n. 1 A measuring rod thirty-six inches long. 2 (context figuratively English) A standard to which other measurements or comparisons are judged.

WordNet
yardstick
  1. n. a measure or standard used for comparison; "on what kind of yardstick is he basing his judgment?"

  2. a ruler or tape that is three feet long [syn: yard measure]

Wikipedia
Yardstick

A yardstick is a straightedge used to physically measure lengths of up to a yard (0.9144 metres or three feet) high. Yardsticks are flat wooden boards with markings at regular intervals.

Usage examples of "yardstick".

It was tricky work laying out the guidelines on the walls with the yardstick, first the horizontals, moving the stepladder across from left to right three feet at a hop, then the verticals, easy enough at the bottom but flirting more and more dangerously with wobbliness as she drew nearer to the top and was forced to go up on tiptoe.

Science fiction has indeed changed immensely since the pulp era, as has all literature, and I think it would only be fair to use a somewhat different yardstick for these admittedly crude magazines of the past, than for those published today.

And that although actual size or spatial extension is often a good indicator of these yardsticks, it does not necessarily and always translate into simple physical dimensions.

Yet, progress in these operational directions may be in danger of faltering if only old Cold War yardsticks are used to make future force investments and to direct studies about future force structure and associated infrastructure.

When you were out of Friends and couples like himself and Miyume Little were short yardsticks you looked for the long ones, the ones generally just standing close and waiting.

He was rather like a man who having gotten used to measuring with a yardstick instead of a foot-rule, suddenly finds the yardstick replaced by a fathom line.

With great care Dahlquist made one last connection while holding down the end of the yardstick.

You're a bloodless featureless zombie, as measured as a yardstick and colder than liquid air!

When you were out of short yardsticks you looked for the long ones, the ones that wouldn’t lie, and you started thinking about half-baked theories, like cosmic macrostructures, folded interfaces, or any straw of reason that might give a mind something to work on or suggest a direction they’d gone or offer a hint which of a hundred improbables was the truth.

On it sat three crudely fashioned straw dolls, a couple of badly chipped enamel pots, a broken piece of yardstick and a tin measuring cup.

The only yardstick I can apply to all four currencies is the troy ounce of fine gold (= 480 grains in both troy and avoirdupois, or 31.