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. 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 India, where 1 quintal = 100 kg. In British English, it referred to the hundredweight; in American English, it formerly referred to an uncommon measure of 100 kilograms. Languages drawing its cognate name for the weight from latin languages include French, Portuguese and Spanishquintal, Italian quintale, Esperanto kvintalo, Polish kwintal. Languages taking their cognates from Germanicized centner include German Zentner, Lithuanian centneris, Swedish centner, Polish cetnar, Russian центнер, Ukrainian це́нтнер, Estonian tsentner and Spanish centena. Many European languages have come to translate both the imperial and American hundredweight as their cognate form of quintal or centner.
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The concept has resulted in two different series of masses: Those based on the localpound, and those uprated to being based on the kilogram. In India and Albania, the 100 kilogram definition had a heavy Arabic influence. It is a standard measurement of mass for agricultural products. In France it used to be defined as 100 livres, about 48.95 kg, and has been redefined as 100 kg, 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; In Portugal a quintal is 128 arrátels or about 58.75 kg. The German Zentner is pound-based, and thus since metrication is defined as 50 kg, whereas the Austrian and Swiss Zentner since metrication has been re-defined as 100 kg. In Germany a measure of 100 kg is named a Doppelzentner. Common agricultural units used in the Soviet Union were the 100-kilogram centner 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 or as 112 lb. 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 as 100 kilograms. However, it is no longer used in USA or by NIST though it still appears in the statute. In France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia and in India, it is still in daily use by farmers. In Brazil and other South American countries, it is used under its alternative spelling of "kintal". It is also used in some African countries including Angola.
