The quintal or centner is a historical unit of mass in many countries which is usually defined as 100 base units, such as pounds or kilograms.[1] 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 = 1000NaN0.[2]
In British English, it referred to the hundredweight; in American English, it formerly referred to an uncommon measurement of 1000NaN0.
Languages drawing its cognate name for the weight from Romance languages include French, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish French: quintal, Italian Italian: quintale, Esperanto Esperanto: kvintalo, Polish Polish: kwintal. Languages taking their cognates from Germanicized centner include the German German: [[Zentner]], Lithuanian Lithuanian: centneris, Swedish Swedish: centner, Polish Polish: cetnar, Russian and Ukrainian Russian: центнер (Ukrainian: tsentner) and Estonian Estonian: tsentner.
Many European languages have come to translate both the British hundredweight (8 stone or 1122NaN2) and the American hundredweight (1002NaN2), as their cognate form of quintal or centner.
The concept has resulted in two different series of masses: Those based on the local pound (which after metrication was considered equivalent to 0.5kg (01.1lb), and those uprated to being based on the kilogram.
In Albania (Albanian: kuintal), Ethiopia (kuntal), and India, the 1000NaN0 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 French: livres (pounds), about 48.950NaN0, and has been redefined as 1000NaN0 (French: [[mesures usuelles]]), thus called metric quintal with symbol qq. In Spain, the Spanish; Castilian: quintal is still defined as 100 Spanish; Castilian: libras, or about 460NaN0, but the metric quintal is also defined as 1000NaN0;[3] In Portugal a quintal is 128 Portuguese: [[arrátel|arráteis]] or about 58.750NaN0.
The German German: [[:de:Zentner|Zentner]] and the Danish Danish: [[:da:Centner|Centner]] are pound-based, and thus since metrication are defined as 500NaN0, whereas the Austrian and Swiss German: Zentner since metrication has been re-defined as 1000NaN0. In Germany a measure of 1000NaN0 is named a German: Doppelzentner.
Common agricultural units used in the Soviet Union were the 1000NaN0 Russian: centner (Russian: центнер) and the term "centner per hectare". These are still used by countries that were part of the Soviet Union.
In English both terms quintal and centner were once alternative names for the hundredweight and thus defined either as 100 lb (exactly) or as . Also, in the Dominican Republic it is about . The German 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. Commonly used in the Dominion (and later province) of Newfoundland up until the 1960s as a measure for of salt cod.
The quintal was defined in the United States in 1866[4] as 1000NaN0. 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.[5]
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.[6]