Imperial vs American pints?

Question

There was a question on how many ounces in a pint, and it made me wonder about the difference between Imperial (British) pints and "American" pints. I'd always heard "A pint's a pound the world around", which sounds like a British phrase, but obviously only fits the American pint. And since we were a British colony, you'd think we'd have a similar measuring system.

So why is there a difference?

Answer 1

http://www.answers.com/topic/pint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_me...

The important things to know are imperial pints carry more beer. Many brew pubs in the US call their glass a pint but when filled to the rim it contain less than 16 fluid ounces. We are being ripped $$-time for another beer/pint revolution.

Answer 2

The US was  already established before weights and measures were truly standardized (1824).  The imperial pint is based on the imperial gallon, which is the volume of about 10# of water at room temperature.  The US customary gallon is based on the US customary pint, which is the volume of one pound of water at room temperature.  Because these measurements use different multiples of 4 rather than 10 as their primary divisions, they don't convert very easily.

In fact the word pint is related to the word pound, and in the US the liquid measurement retains its relation to the dry weight measure.  In the UK, as a result of the redefinitions of things, an imperial pint is no longer the same as an imperial pound; it's about 1/4 larger.

If that confuses you, consider this: when dealing with metals, one uses troy oz. and pounds.  A troy ounce is about 1 1/10 the size of a US oz., but there are only 12 troy ounces to a troy pound, so a customary pound is larger than a troy pound (now you know the answer to the old riddle: a pound of feathers actually does weigh more than a pound of lead!).

Answer 3

A pint is 1/8 of a gallon...the problem is there are dozens of different gallons.

In the US we adopted the "wine gallon" (231 cubic inches ) as our standard size of measurement.

In the UK they adopted the "corn gallon" (268.8 cubic inches) as theirs, hence the disparagement.