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Latin, hida.

The hide was the basic unit of assessment for public obligations in most of the counties of Wessex and western Mercia. It was the oldest of such units in Anglo-Saxon England, documented from the early seventh century, almost as soon as literacy was re-introduced into England. According to Bede, the hide was the land of one family, presumably a free, tax-paying family and its dependants. In most areas, the hide was divided into four virgates and 120 acres, virgates and acres being like the hide itself units of assessment rather than measures of area.

Over a century ago J.H. Round demonstrated the essential artificiality of this system, in which the majority of vills in many areas were assessed in multiples or simple fractions of five hides. These assessments were arrived at by allocating a round number of hides to a county, dividing the county total among its constituent Hundreds, then further subdividing the total for each Hundred among the vills in that Hundred. At the level of the vill, multiples or fractions of 5 hides are common in Domesday; when the assessments were first imposed, these five-hide units were presumably the norm. Although Round's thesis on the essential artificiality of the system has been challenged in recent times by computer-based models, these have not been found convincing.

For the debate, see J.H. Round, Feudal England (1895); John McDonald and G.D. Snooks, The Domesday economy: a new approach to Anglo-Norman history (1986); and R.A. Leaver, 'Five hides in ten counties: a contribution to the Domesday regression debate', Economic History Review, vol. 41 (1988), pages 525-42. Recent work on the earlier history of the hide also reinforces Round's view: Defence of Wessex: the Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon fortification, edited by David Hill and A.R. Rumble (Manchester, 1996).