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cuartillo [Spanish]

Compare cuartilla.

Contents

Costa Rica

Cuba

Guatemala

Ifni

Mexico

Nicaragua

Spain

The underlying meaning is “a fourth”.

1

In Spain, 20ᵗʰ century:

• a unit of liquid capacity, approximately 504 milliliters (about 1.07 U.S. liquid pint), a fourth of an azumbre.
• a unit of dry capacity, about 1.156 liters (about 1.05 U.S. dry quarts), a fourth of a celemín.

United Nations, 1966.

Technical Factors..., 1972, page 157.

In the 19ᵗʰ century local values prevailed:

1. Dirección General del Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico.
Equivalencias entre las Pesas y Medidas Usadas Antiguamente en las Diversas Provincias de España y las Legales del Sistema Métrico-Decimal.
Publicadas de Real Orden.
Madrid: Imprenta de la Dirección General del Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico, 1886.

2

In Costa Rica, 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of capacity, = 4.25 liters, according to the UN report. The 1885 government report describes it as 4.16 liters.

United Nations, 1966.

[Costa Rica. Ministerio de formento.]
Medidas y pesas del sistema métrico, y tablas de equivalencia con las antiguas.
San José de Costa Rica: Imprenta nacional, 1885.

3

In Cuba, 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of capacity used for habanero, approximately 860.02 milliliters.

United Nations, 1966.

4

In Guatemala, 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of capacity, approximately 1.16 liters. A fourth of a celemín.

United Nations, 1966.

5

In Ifni, 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of liquid capacity, approximately 509 milliliters.

United Nations, 1966.

6

In Mexico, 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of liquid capacity used for cooking oil, approximately 506 milliliters (United Nations, 1966).

An earlier writer, Clason, says that in Mexico the cuartillo is both a unit of liquid capacity, about 456.3 mL (0.482 U.S. liquid quarts), and of dry capacity, about 1.892 liters (1.72 U.S. dry quarts). Doursther, writing in 1840, says the Mexican cuartillo is an eighteenth part of the jame of 8 liters, which would make it 444.4 milliliters.

In reality, the situation was much more complex than those neat summaries would suggest, resembling France before the Revolution. The 1930 Agricultural Census uncovered the following cuartillos then in use:

7

In Nicaragua, a unit of dry capacity = ½ medio, about 3906 milliliters. Some writers¹ assert that “cuartillo” was the name of the physical measure, and the name of the volume it measured was “cuarto”.

1. Cristina Maria van der Gulden.
Vocabulario Nicaragüense.
Managua: Editorial UCA, 1995.

Page 94, citing Humberto Tapia Barquero, Nicaragua, maiz y folklore, Managua, 1981, page 236.

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Last revised: 13 April 2014.