Versts to Yards (verst to yd)

1 verst equals 1,166.666667 yards (rounded).

1 verst = 1,166.666667 yards

How to convert versts to yards

To convert versts to yards, multiply the number of versts by 1,166.666667. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply yards by 0.0008571428571 (rounded).

yards = versts × 1,166.666667

Example: 10 versts = 11,666.66667 yards.

About these units

Verst (verst)

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

500 sazhens or 3,500 feet (1.0668 km). The standard Russian unit of distance before the metric system.

Travellers in Tsarist Russia read road distances in versts, a word often linked to the idea of a turn, as in the length of a furrow before a plough turns. The unit was long and not fixed: in the 17th century a verst counted 700 sazhens, about 1.49 km, and under Peter the Great it was cut to 500 sazhens.

That later verst is 3,500 English feet, or 1.0668 km, which is the figure used here. A border verst, used in land surveys, was twice as long. One English-language article lists the verst as 1,500 sazhens in a summary table, but its own metric and feet figures only work with 500, so the larger number appears to be a slip.

Finland kept its own virsta, defined in 1827 at 1,068.84 m, until metrication in the 1880s. In Russia, versts stayed on milestones and in novels well into the 20th century, and about 0.94 verst makes a kilometre.

1 verst = 1,066.8 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Verst; Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian units of measurement

Yard (yd)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.

Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.

Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.

1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Yard; Wikipedia: Inch; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Related conversions

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