morgen

A morgen (Mg) is a historical, but still occasionally used, German unit of area used in agriculture. Officially, it is no longer in use, having been supplanted by the hectare. While today it is approximately equivalent to the Prussian morgen, measuring 25 ares or 2,500 square meters (), its area once ranged from , but usually between . In the 20th century, the quarter hectare became standard for one morgen. The Morgen unit of land measurement was also used in the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, and parts of the Dutch colonial empire, such as South Africa. It was also used in the Balkans, Norway, and Denmark, where it was equal to about .

thumb|right|A farmer with a two-horse team and a single-furrow plough The word is identical to the German and Dutch word for "morning" because the measurement was determined by the area that can be ploughed with a single-furrow horse or ox plough in one morning (measured from morning to noon). The morgen was usually defined as a rectangle with sides of an even number of local rods, as turning while ploughing was to be avoided as much as possible.