fardel

noun

1. A fourth part: a quarter of anything.

   “I... bought a Farthel of Bread and a Mutckin of Ale.”

2. (historical)An English unit of land area variously understood as the fourth part of an oxgang or of a yardland.

   “You must note, that two Fardells of Land make a Nooke of Land, and two Nookes make halfe a Yard of Land.”

   “Fardel of Land, the fourth part of a Yard-land.”

3. (obsolete)A bundle or burden.

   “Hees forc't to trot with fardle at his backe, / From houſe to houſe, demaunding if they lacke / A poore yong man that's willing to take paine, / And mickle labour, though for little gaine.”

   “[W]ho would fardels beare / To grunt and ſweat vnder a wearie life, / But that the dread of ſomething after death, / The vndiſcouer'd country, from whoſe borne / No trauiler returnes, puzzels the will, / And makes vs rather beare thoſe ills we haue, / Then flie to others that we know not of.”

   “It doth also appear by the abbreviate of the accounts sent home out of the Indies, that there remained in the hands of the agent, master Starkey, 482 fardels of calicos, viz.: 8 canisters of pintados, and 117 fardels of checkered stuffs, 51 fardels of long malow girdles, […].”

   “This to the shunless fardel of the world / Nerves my uncurbèd back; […]”

   ““God in his mercy be thanked” said Katherine. “My dear Lord is then truly and honestly rid of his fardel.””

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)To make up in fardels; to bunch.

   “Here are foure vntruths fardelled vp together”