the.com/quintal
a hundred-weight unit that crossed an ocean and quietly changed its mass on arrival
means A unit of mass equal to a hundredweight, traditionally 100 pounds but now standardized in the metric system as 100 kilograms.
from From medieval Latin quintale, borrowed from Arabic qinṭār, itself taken from Latin centenarius, 'of a hundred' — the same root behind 'cent' and 'century.' The word made a long round trip: a Roman hundred-weight notion passed into Arabic, then back into the languages of medieval Europe, where it settled into Spanish, Portuguese, and French quintal. Along the way the exact 'hundred' it counted shifted from place to place, which is why the same word could mean different weights on different shores.
- latin roots
- name traces back to centum, meaning one hundred
- shifting weight
- metric quintal equals exactly 100 kilograms
- old world
- historically equaled a hundredweight, around 50 kilograms
- fishing trade
- once measured dried cod across the Atlantic
- still alive
- common in Indian and Latin American agriculture today
quintal metric unit — 100 kilograms, used internationally for agricultural commodities like coffee and cocoa
quintal castilian unit — 46 kilograms, historically used in spain and spanish america for trade
quintal portuguese unit — 58.75 kilograms, traditional measure in portugal for grain and produce