pint

The pint (, ; symbol pt, sometimes abbreviated as p) is a unit of volume or capacity in both the imperial and United States customary measurement systems. In both of those systems it is traditionally one eighth of a gallon. The British imperial pint is about 20% larger than the American pint because the two systems are defined differently. Almost all other countries have standardized on the metric system, so although some of them still also have traditional units called pints (such as for beverages), the volume varies by regional custom. The imperial pint (≈) is used in the United Kingdom and Ireland and to a limited extent in Commonwealth nations. In the United States, two kinds of pint are used: a liquid pint (≈) and a less common dry pint (≈). Other former British colonies, such as Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, converted to the metric system in the 1960s and 1970s; so while the term may still be in common use in these countries, it may no longer refer to the British imperial pint once used throughout the British Empire. Name Pint comes from the Old French word and perhaps ultimately from Vulgar Latin meaning "painted", for marks painted on the side of a container to show capacity. It is linguistically related, though greatly diverging in meaning, to Pinto – an Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese name for a person with a speckled or dark complexion, often used as a surname in these languages.