yard line
58
3.4
- noun
- /jɑrd laɪn/
- US
:
línea de yarda
- They're past the 50-yard line.
- 50-yard line
- 20-yard line
- 10-yard line
Examples
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You fumbled on the one-yard line.
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In the first quarter, the Dolphins got the ball on their 22-yard line.
Blog text (6) -
You are on the one yard line, Phil.
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Los Angeles ball on the 27 yard line first and...
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The ball was on the 50-yard line.
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And it is intercepted at the 31 yard line.
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Guards have the ball on their own 29-yard line.
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First and 10 at the Cleveland 47-yard line.
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First down and ten for the Rams, from the 42-yard line.
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The quarterback threw a pass from the 30-yard line to the receiver.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'yard' (a unit of length) + 'line' (a marked or conceptual division) yields a line marked at a yard-based interval. Although the full sports-specific function (its role in American football) requires domain knowledge, the basic referent—a line that indicates yards—is transparently inferable from the parts.
Etymology
Yard line comes from the painted lines on an American football field: each yard is a short measure of length and a line marks that distance across the grass. So a yard line shows the 'distance from the goal', which is why people say 'at the 20-yard line' to tell where the ball is.