院子

English 'yard' is a lazy word that swallows lawn, garden, and patio without blinking. Chinese splits that same space into separate words, and 院子 is the narrowest of them. A 院子 is the open ground enclosed by a house or compound wall, where people hang laundry and park a scooter. If grass and flowers grow there, natives say 花园. If it has a gate, a sign, and strangers walking through it, it is 公园. So an American backyard full of grass reads closer to 花园 or 草坪 than to 院子.

When 院 sits inside 学院, 医院, or 影院, it is shorthand for an organization with a nameplate. None of those words contains a courtyard, no matter how the characters look. 院子 is the physical open space inside a building compound, and it always keeps its 子. That ending matters: drop it and you are back to talking about schools and hospitals. The riddle works precisely because it swaps a word-part for a place and lets you hear the difference. “学院有院子，影院没院子，医院是院子？” (The college has a courtyard, the cinema doesn't have a courtyard — is the hospital a courtyard?) ── [《三星在哪里？》](/read/where-is-samsung#s1)

做 is the default crutch for 'do', and it does punch above its weight in Chinese. But a courtyard is not an activity, so 做院子 gives natives the same jolt as 'do the floor'. You always name what you actually do out there: 打扫院子, 收拾院子, 种点花. For general yard work, say 院子里的活儿, not 院子工作. And if you are just hanging around outside, 在院子里坐着 does the job.