Hundredweight
unit of mass, with differing values
The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and United States customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the United States customary and British imperial systems. The two values are distinguished in American English as the short and long hundredweight and in British English as the cental and imperial hundredweight.
The short hundredweight or cental of 100 pounds (45.36 kg) is defined in the United States customary system.
The long or imperial hundredweight of 8 stone or 112 pounds (50.80 kg) is defined in the British imperial system.
Under both conventions, there are 20 hundredweight in a ton, producing a "short ton" of 2,000 pounds (907.2 kg) and a "long ton" of 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg).
History
The hundredweight has had many values. In England in around 1300, different hundreds (centum in Medieval Latin) were defined. The Weights and Measures Act 1835 formally established the present imperial hundredweight of 112 pounds (50.80 kg).
The United States and Canada came to use the term "hundredweight" to refer to a unit of 100 pounds (45.36 kg).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hundredweight” as unit of mass, with differing values. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as unit of mass, with differing values. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1267081. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1300 and 1835.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hundredweight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.