Quintal

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:More citations needed The quintal or centner is a historical unit of mass in many countries that is usually defined as 100 base units, such as pounds or kilograms. It is a traditional unit of weight in France, Portugal, and Spain and their former colonies. It is commonly used for grain prices in wholesale markets in Ethiopia, Eritrea and India, where 1 quintal = Template:Convert.

In British English, it referred to the hundredweight; in American English, it formerly referred to an uncommon measurement of Template:Convert.

Languages drawing its cognate name for the weight from Romance languages include French, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish , Italian , Esperanto , Polish . Languages taking their cognates from Germanicized centner include the German , Lithuanian , Swedish , Polish , Russian and Ukrainian () and Estonian .

Many European languages have come to translate both the British hundredweight (8 stone or Template:Convert) and the American hundredweight (Template:Convert), as their cognate form of quintal or centner.

Name

The concept has resulted in two different series of masses: Those based on the local pound (which after metrication was considered equivalent to Template:Convert, and those uprated to being based on the kilogram.

In Albania (), Ethiopia (), and India, the Template:Convert definition may have been introduced via Islamic trade. It is a standard measurement of mass for agricultural products in those countries.

In France it used to be defined as 100 (pounds), about Template:Convert, and has been redefined as 100 kg (), thus called metric quintal with symbol qq. In Spain, the is still defined as 100 , or about Template:Convert, but the metric quintal is also defined as 100 kg; In Portugal a quintal is 128 or about Template:Convert.

The German and the Danish are pound-based, and thus since metrication are defined as Template:Convert, whereas the Austrian and Swiss since metrication has been re-defined as 100 kg. In Germany a measure of 100 kg is named a .

In Italy, the is commonly used to refer to 100 kg and is abbreviated to q, but the usage is considered informal and is not considered legally valid since 1990.

Common agricultural units used in the Soviet Union were the 100 kg () and the term " per hectare". These are still used by countries that were part of the Soviet Union.

English use

In English both terms quintal and centner were once alternative names for the hundredweight and thus defined either as 100 lb (exactly Template:Cvt) or as Template:Cvt. Also, in the Dominican Republic it is about Template:Cvt. The German was introduced to the English language via Hanseatic trade as a measure of the weight of certain crops including hops for beer production. Commonly used in the Dominion (and later province) of Newfoundland up until the 1960s as a measure for Template:Cvt of salt cod.

The quintal was defined in the United States in 1866 as Template:Convert. However, it is no longer used in the United States or by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), though it still appears in the statute.

In France, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia, and India, it is still in daily use by farmers. It is also used in Brazil and other South American countries and in some African countries including Angola.

See also

• Kasson Act (1866)
• Hundredweight