pinte

Pint comes from Old French pinte, which may derive from Vulgar Latin *pincta or from Latin picta, the feminine past participle of pingere, meaning 'painted.' The theory is that a pint was originally a painted mark on a container indicating a measured volume. A line scratched or painted on a jug. The word entered English by the fourteenth century and immediately inherited the same problem as every other medieval measure: nobody agreed on its size.

In England, the pint was defined variously by commodity. A pint of wine differed from a pint of ale. The Assize of Bread and Ale in 1266 attempted to standardize measures, with limited success. By the time the Imperial system was established in 1824, the British pint was set at one-eighth of an Imperial gallon — 568.26 millilitres. This is the pint that British and Irish pubs still pour.

The American pint followed the older, smaller wine gallon. One-eighth of the American gallon gives 473.18 millilitres. The difference is not trivial: a British pint holds nearly twenty percent more liquid than an American one. An American visiting a London pub is getting more beer than they think. A Londoner ordering a pint in New York is getting less.

The pint glass has become a cultural object. The British nonic glass with its bulge near the rim. The American shaker pint, straight-sided and stackable. The glass itself signals which pint you are getting. The word is eight hundred years old and still identifies a specific social ritual — one round, one person, one glass — even if the glass keeps changing size.