Area is a quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional surface or shape, or planar lamina, in the plane.
Mathworld page on Area.
Wikipedia page on Area.
Units
Every unit of length has a corresponding unit of area, namely the area of a square with the given side length. Thus areas can be measured in square metres (m²), square centimetres (cm²), square millimetres (mm²), square kilometres (km²), square feet (ft²), square yards (yd²), square miles (mi²), and so forth. Algebraically, these units can be thought of as the squares of the corresponding length units.
The SI unit of area is the square metre, which is considered an SI derived unit.