Meaning
A yard shared by several households, where each family has its own room or small dwelling but they share the open yard space, the standpipe, the kitchen, and the toilet in common. The common yard — close kin to the tenement yard — is a defining setting of Jamaican working-class and inner-city life, a place of tight community, shared struggle, borrowed sugar, and everybody in everybody's business.
Examples
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Nuff family live inna di one common yard.
Several families live in the one common yard.
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Everybody share di standpipe inna di common yard.
Everybody shares the standpipe in the common yard.
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Inna common yard, nutten nuh secret.
In a common yard, nothing is a secret.
Origin
From 'common' (shared) + 'yard'; a multi-family shared yard. See [[tenement-yard]], [[standpipe]].
How it’s used
A yard shared by several households, with common standpipe/kitchen/toilet. See [[tenement-yard]], [[standpipe]].