Late Middle English, from Anglo-Norman quintal, from Middle French quintal, from Old French and Medieval Latin quintale and quintallus (“various medieval hundredweights”), from Arabic قِنْطَار (qinṭār, “100 rottols”), from Classical Syriac ܩܰܢܛܺܝܪܳܐ (qanṭīrā) and ܩܰܢܛܺܝܢܳܪܳܐ (qanṭīnārā), from Byzantine Greek κεντηνάριον (kentēnárion), from Latin centēnārium (“100 Roman pounds”), from the neuter of centēnārius (“having 100 things”). Use for various non-English units, borrowed from French quintal, Spanish quintal, Portuguese quintal, etc. The apparent relation to quint- (“five, fivefold”) and -al (forming adjectives) is accidental, although it possibly influenced the eventual spelling of the term. Doublet of centenary, centner, and kantar.
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Historical Synonym of hundredweight, 100 or 112 English or American pounds.
In one import license alone, the merchant in question was instructed to bring in 13,000 quintals of alum, which, snapped up by industries in England and the Low Countries, would yield the king a cool £8,666 13s 4d.2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 204:
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Historical Various other similar units of weight in other systems.
Etymology From quint- (“five, fivefold”) + -al (forming adjectives).
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Grammar, Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences Referring to five (or more) things; of, in or relating to the quintal grammatical number.
What Table 4 does not show is the possibility of even "quadral" and "quintal" forms, like yufopela 'you four', 'the four of you', yufaipela 'you five', 'the five of you'.1995, John W. M. Verhaar, Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin: An Experiment in Corpus Linguistics, page 20:
In sign languages, on the other hand, trial, quadral and quintal forms such as found in UgSL are not uncommon.2014, Sam Lutalo-Kiingi, A Descriptive Grammar of Morphosyntactic Constructions in Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL), page 198:
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Moreover, trial, quadral and quintal forms are given an identical status as number values in the pronominal domain.2023, Raquel Veiga Busto, Person and Number: An Empirical Study of Catalan Sign Language Pronouns, page 102:
quintal
noun
Etymology From quint- (“five, fivefold”) + -al (forming adjectives).
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Grammar, Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences A grammatical number referring to five (or more) things.
Furthermore, if the number-incorporated pronouns are analyzed as grammatically marked for number, distinct grammatical categories for trial, quadral and quintal must be posited.2002, Kearsy Annette Cormier, Grammaticization of Indexic Signs: How American Sign Language Expresses Numerosity, page 69:
In UgSL, we find a complete set of forms for dual, trial, quadral and quintal in several paradigmatic contrasts.2014, Sam Lutalo-Kiingi, A Descriptive Grammar of Morphosyntactic Constructions in Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL), page 198:
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All in all, this suggests that in LSC the differences observed in the motion taken by exact number pronouns is not grounded in a fundamental distinction between the dual vs. the trial, the quadral and the quintal.2023, Raquel Veiga Busto, Person and Number: An Empirical Study of Catalan Sign Language Pronouns, page 164: