Information about Pint

The pint is an English unit of volume or capacity in the imperial system and United States customary units, equivalent in each system to one half of a quart, and one eighth of a gallon. The value is very roughly half a litre, but differs between systems, and according to whether the contents are wet or dry:

United Kingdom, Commonwealth of Nations (Imperial)

1 pint = 20 fluid ounces = 568.26125 ml ≈ 568 ml

1 pint = 4 gills (this was the legal definition although in some areas a gill of milk or beer is referred to as a half-pint; elsewhere a gill was the ⅓ pint of milk given free to school children)

United States

1 pint (wet) = 16 fluid ounces = 2 cups = 473.176473 ml ≈ 473 ml

1 pint (dry) = 550.6104713575 ml ≈ 551 ml

1 pint (metric) = 500 ml (informally)

Fifty imperial pints or sixty US wet pints are both very close to one cubic foot.

History

The pint is defined as ¹⁄₈ of a gallon. Other versions of the gallon were defined for different commodities, and there were equally many versions of the pint.

America adopted the British wine gallon (defined in 1707 as 231 cubic inches) as its basic liquid measure, from which the U.S. wet pint is derived, and the British corn gallon (¹⁄₈ of a standard “Winchester” bushel of corn, or 268.8 cubic inches) as its dry measure, from which the US dry pint is derived.

In 1824 the British parliament replaced all its variant gallons with a new imperial gallon based on ten pounds of distilled water at 62 °F (277.42 cubic inches), from which the UK pint is derived.

Effects of metrication

The UK pint is officially defined as 568.26125 ml exactly in the Units of Measurement Regulations 1995.^[1]

As part of the metrication process, the pint in the UK and in Kenya is now used only as a measure for beer and cider when sold by the glass (see pint glass) – in public houses for instance – and for milk, although milk is also sold in metric quantities. Many recipes published in the UK still provide ingredient quantities in imperial, where the pint is often used as a unit for larger liquid quantities. Most new recipes are now published in metric only with the pint being rounded to 500 or 600 ml.

Ireland has completed its metrication process and the pint is only used for serving beer, stout and cider.

In Australia and New Zealand, a subtle change was made in 1-pint milk bottles during the conversion from Imperial to metric in the 1970s. The height and diameter of the milk bottle remained unchanged, so that existing equipment for handling and storing such bottles was unaffected, but the shape was subtly adjusted to increase the capacity from 568 ml to 600 ml - a nice, round, metric measure. Such milk bottles are no longer officially referred to as pints. The pint glass in pubs in Australia (which is so called) remains closer to the standard Imperial pint, at 570 ml. A pint of beer in Australia or New Zealand is 570 ml, except in South Australia where a pint is 425 ml and 570 ml is called an imperial pint.

A 375 ml bottle of liquor in the US and the Canadian maritime provinces is sometimes referred to as a “pint”, hearkening back to the days when liquor came in actual US pints, quarts, and half-gallons.

Variations

There was a now-obsolete unit of measurement in Scotland known as the 'Scottish pint' or 'joug' and equal to three imperial pints. It remained in use until the 19th century, and survived significantly longer than most of the old Scottish measurements.

Etymology

pint The French word pinte having the same roots is a false friend. In French Canada in particular, the pint is actually the chopine whilst the quart is the pinte. In France it's sometimes used to describe a 500 ml glass of beer. In Flanders, the word pint only refers to a 250 ml glass of lager. Some West- and East-Flemish dialects use it as a word for beaker.

References