Meaning
A rented urban yard of many small single rooms, each home to a whole family, ranged around a shared yard with a common standpipe, kitchen, and toilet. The tenement yard is the classic setting of poor city life in Kingston, immortalised in song and story — crowded, noisy, and hard, but knit together by a fierce neighbourly closeness. It is the sharper, city cousin of the common yard.
Examples
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Him grow up inna a tenement yard dung town.
He grew up in a tenement yard downtown.
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One standpipe serve di whole tenement yard.
One standpipe serves the whole tenement yard.
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Life inna di tenement yard hard but close.
Life in the tenement yard is hard but close-knit.
Origin
From 'tenement' (rented rooms) + 'yard'; the crowded rented city yard. See [[common-yard]], [[standpipe]].
How it’s used
A rented urban yard of many single rooms sharing standpipe/kitchen/toilet. See [[common-yard]], [[standpipe]].