| Reference | Quarts (qt) | US Liquid pints (pt) |
|---|---|---|
| A teaspoon | 0.00439938 qt | 0.0105669 pt |
| A can of soft drink | 0.290359 qt | 0.697414 pt |
| A wine bottle | 0.659908 qt | 1.58503 pt |
| A bathtub | 131.982 qt | 317.006 pt |
| An Olympic swimming pool | 2199692 qt | 5283441 pt |
The quart in the imperial system is a unit of volume equal to exactly 1136.5225 millilitres. Its symbol is qt. It is two imperial pints and a quarter of an imperial gallon, and its name says so: quart comes from the Latin quartus, a fourth. It sits between the pint and the gallon and, in Britain, it has lost to both.
Its decline is the clearest case of a unit being squeezed out from both sides. The pint survived because it is the legal measure for draught beer and because a person can hold one; the gallon survived in fuel economy figures. The quart is neither drunk nor driven, so nothing kept it in daily speech, and British shops now describe the same quantity as a litre or as two pints.
In the United States the same name is thriving. A United States liquid quart is 946 millilitres, and milk, cream, stock, ice cream, paint and motor oil are all sold in that size. An engine oil change is quoted in quarts, five being typical for a car, and the quart carton is one of the most recognisable objects in an American kitchen.
That American survival owes something to the litre. A United States quart is only five per cent smaller than a litre, so shelf sizes barely changed when Canadian and international products moved to metric, and a shopper comparing a quart with a litre is comparing almost the same thing. The imperial quart is thirteen per cent larger than a litre, which made the same substitution less comfortable in Britain.
The dry measure adds a further complication in the United States. A dry quart is 1101 millilitres against the liquid quart's 946, and it belongs to a separate chain used for berries, produce and grain. Nothing on a label distinguishes them, so the same word describes two different quantities depending on whether the contents pour or not.
For conversion, the imperial quart is 1.1365 litres and the United States liquid quart is 0.9464. The rule of thumb that a quart is roughly a litre is safe in America and about a seventh out in Britain, which is exactly the kind of margin that turns a recipe or a chemical dilution wrong without looking obviously wrong.
One imperial quart equals 1136.5225 millilitres, 2 imperial pints, 0.25 imperial gallons, or about 1.201 US liquid quarts.
The United States liquid pint is a unit of volume equal to exactly 473.176473 millilitres. Its symbol is pt. It is sixteen United States fluid ounces and an eighth of a United States gallon. It is noticeably smaller than the imperial pint of 568 millilitres, because the American pint holds sixteen fluid ounces where the British one holds twenty.
That difference of four ounces is the whole story of the two pints. Both systems descend from the same medieval English measures, but Britain rebuilt its liquid chain in 1824 around a gallon of ten pounds of water, while the United States kept the older wine gallon of 231 cubic inches. The pint inherited the difference, and a British pint is now about a fifth larger than an American one.
The rhyme survives because the American pint fits it. A pint's a pound the world around works for the United States pint, since sixteen fluid ounces of water weigh 1.04 pounds, and it fails in Britain, where a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter. The saying is a useful reminder that measurement rhymes travel worse than the measurements themselves.
Draught beer is where the difference becomes visible to travellers, and where American practice is looser than British. There is no federal requirement that a glass sold as a pint contain a pint, and the widely used sixteen-ounce shaker glass holds that volume only when filled to the brim, so a poured beer with a head contains less. Several states have legislated on the point precisely because the imperial system's verified glass has no American equivalent.
Domestic packaging uses it constantly. Milk, cream, ice cream and soft fruit are sold in pint containers, and a donated unit of blood is loosely called a pint although it is about 470 millilitres. Premium ice cream in a pint tub is one of the most recognisable retail formats in the country.
A separate United States dry pint of 551 millilitres exists for produce, and nothing in the word distinguishes it. A pint of cream and a pint of blueberries are therefore different quantities, differing by about sixteen per cent, which is the sort of detail that only becomes visible when someone tries to convert a recipe.
One United States liquid pint equals 473.176 millilitres, 16 US fluid ounces, 0.125 US gallons, or about 0.833 imperial pints.