The pint is a unit of volume or capacity. It is in use mainly in the U.S., the UK and Ireland, although the value is not the same and the U.S. has two types of pint:

1 Imperial pint (UK) = 20 UK fluid ounces ≈ 568 mL (0.56826125 litres exactly)

1 Imperial pint (UK) = 4 UK gills (this was the legal definition although in some areas a gill of milk or beer referred to 1/2 pint; elsewhere a gill was the 1/3 pint of milk given free to school children)

1 pint (U.S., wet) = 16 U.S. fluid ounces = 2 U.S. cups ≈ 473 mL (0.473176473 litres exactly)

1 pint (U.S., dry) ≈ 551 mL (0.5506104713575 litres exactly)

As part of the metrication process, the pint in the UK is now only used as a measure for beer (see pint glass) and cider when sold by the glass (in public houses for instance) and milk (although milk is also sold in metric quantities). Many recipes published in the UK still provide ingredient quantities in imperial and metric, where the pint is often used as a unit for larger liquid quantites. 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 currently the pint is only used in informal speech and for beer.

History

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The pint is defined as a 1/8 of the 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 U.S. 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.

The UK pint is officially defined as 0.56826125 litres precisely in The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995.

In 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.

Translation notes

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When translating to and from French, be aware that although the word pinte has the same root, it sometimes designates a different unit of volume. In French Canada in particular, the pint is the chopine whilst the quart is the pinte.

Units of volume | Imperial units | Customary units in the United States

Pint | Pinte | Pajnto | Pinte | Pinnt | Pint (Imperial) | パイント | Pint | Пинта | Pint | Pint