quintal

The quintal or centner, from Latin centenarius ("hundredlike"), is a historical unit of mass in many countries which is usually defined as 100 base units of either pounds or kilograms.

Etymology

Both terms share their roots in the Classical Latin centenarius, meaning hundredlike, but the quintal has a convoluted etymology: It became Late Latin centenarium pondus, then in succession, Late Greek, κεντηνάριον (kentenarion), Arabic, qintar. The qintar was reimported to Europe by traders during the Middle Ages, where it became Mediæval Latin quintale, and finally Old French quintal before passing into the English language from French.

The word centner, on the other hand, is simply a Germanicized form of its original Latin name centenarius.

Languages drawing its cognate name for the weight from Arabic qintar include Spanish quintal, French quintal, Italian quintale, Portuguese quintal, Ukrainian квінтал (kvintal), Esperanto kvintalo. Languages taking their cognates from Germanicized centner include German Zentner, Lithuanian centneris, Swedish centner, Polish cetnar, Russian центнер (zentner), Estonian tsentner, and Spanish centena.

Many European languages have come to translate both the Imperial and US hundredweight as their cognate form of quintal or centner.

Pound-based vs. kilogram-based

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

In India and Albania (kuintal), the quintal as equivalent to 100 kilogram was imported via Arabic influence and is a standard measurement of mass for agricultural products.

In France it used to be defined as 100 livres (pounds), about 48.95 kg, and has later been redefined as 100 kg (mesures usuelles), thus called metric quintal with symbol qq.

In Spain, the centena is still defined as 100 libras, or about 46 kg, but the metric quintal is also defined as 100 kg;^[1]

In Portugal a quintal is 128 libras or about 58.75 kg.

The German Zentner is pound-based, and thus since metrification is defined as 50 kg, whereas the Austrian and Swiss Zentner since metrification has been re-defined as 100 kg.

Common agricultural units used in the Soviet Union were the 100-kilogram centner (центнер) and the term "centner per hectare". These are still used by countries released from the former Soviet Union.

In Anglo-American countries

In English both terms quintal and centner were once alternative names for the hundredweight and thus defined either as 100 lb (exactly 45.359237 kg) or as 112 lb (about 50.84 kg). Also, in the Dominican Republic it is about 125 lb. The German Zentner was introduced to the English language via Hanseatic trade as a measure of the weight of certain crops including hops for beer production.

The quintal was defined in the United States in 1866^[2] as 100 kilograms. However, this is not in use and though it still appears in the statute, it has been declared obsolete by NIST.^[3]

References

See also

• Zentner