Talk:Quintal

This is a weird word. It says it is derived from a "cent" word meaning "100", even though most quint words mean 5. Any other weird words?? 66.32.149.57 00:54, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Quintal

A quintal is a measure of fresh or dried fish thereabouts equal to a hundredweight of old english measure. It is customarily considered as 112 pounds to account for inaccurate counts, differences in size and spoilage. Two quintals equal a draft or 224 pounds.

The earliest English fisherman in Newfoundland probably used quintals to measure their catches. The middle English word quintal derives from the Medieval Latin quintale, which in turn probably ultimately derived from Latin centum, meaning hundred. Alternate forms of quintal are cantal, kental and kintall.

R.G. Lounsbury (1934), Thomas Talbot (1882), Dictionary of Newfoundland English (1990) http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/

220 pounds

According to a book from 1918, a quintal is/was equal "to about 220 pounds". Seems to be a lot of confusion across time what a quintal is. -- Stbalbach 16:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

That would be the French metric quintal of 100 kg exactly—and a bad book for not telling that. Christoph Päper 23:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the book was actually written in France in 1878 and references the weight of a statue as 50 quintal's - then in 1918, the book was annotated by an American author, and the 1918 annotation says a quintal=220pounds. So it seems in 1918 a quintal was 220 pounds, but does that hold true for 1878, is the 1918 annotation correct, was a French quintal 220 pounds in 1878? Sorry, thanks for any help, I'm re-annotating the book to modern standards. - Stbalbach 03:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

There never was a quintal—which is historically pretty much the same as the hundredweight—of exactly 220 Avoirdupois pounds, but 100 kg/q / 0.4536 kg/lb ≈ 220.46 lb/q. So 220 lb/q is a fair approximation for the non-metric North American readership of the early 20th century, especially since the weight of the statue certainly is an estimate itself. Whether you would have to further explain “1 quintal = 100 kg” for your target market today is up to you. Note that the weight given as “five tons” would be understood well enough by anyone, no matter whether he thought of short, long or metric tons.

PS: I have to correct my previous claim, the book itself was not bad, but the annotation was too English-centric. Christoph Päper 12:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Great that's perfect and understood, thank you very much! The annotation is actually here (#5) if you'd like to see it or make any corrections. -- Stbalbach 16:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Article scope

I think the prominence of the unit of mass far outweighs the other three. I am moving the quintal page to a dab, and giving the article on the mass the title. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Different meaning in Ancient India?

I found a reference to 96,000 quintals of gold as the plunder. that's $338,630,035,000 US. Did quintals used to mean something different in India in the 1200-1300s? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krolm (talk • contribs) 05:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Arabic kilograms

Currently the article states that ‘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’. The Arabic influence part of that seems a bit implausible. Obviously Arabic (and Indian) maths was way ahead of European maths for many centuries, and used a clear base-10 system. But did the gram (or kilogram) exist? I thought that was more of a French revolutionary thing. Ian Spackman (talk) 15:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

kintel or kwintel?

--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)as it came from French, did it keep the French "ki" for "qu", or revert to the English "kwi"?

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