The yard is a unit of length in the imperial and US system and uses the symbol yd.
A yard is equal to 3 ft or 36 inches. There is 0.9144 m in a yard. There are 1760 yards in a mile.
Derived from the Old English 'gyrd' or 'gerd', the yard was first defined in the late 1600s laws of Ine of Wessex where a "yard of land" (yardland) was an old unit of tax assessment by the government.
The yard was the original standard adpoted by early English leaders and was apparently used in length by the Saxon race and represented the breadth of the chest of a man. After a relative hiatus, Queen Elizabeth reintroduced the yard as the English standard of measure, and it still survives in many 2nd generation conversations today.
The foot is a unit of length in the imperial unit system and uses the symbol ft.
One foot is exactly equal to 12 inches. It is also exactly equal to 0.3048m. One yard is comprised of three feet.
The foot is just behind the metre in terms of widespread use due to its previous popularity. The US is the only developed country that still uses the foot in preference to the metre.
The UK still uses feet to express human height more than metres.