Also 7 kintar, 7– cantar. [Arab., qinṭār, pl. qanāṭīr, ad. (prob. through Syriac) L. centēnārium CENTENARY sb. 1 In OF. quantar, canter, med.L. cantār(i)um (Du Cange), It. cantáro. The form qinṭār is represented by OF. quintar, Sp. and F. quintal, QUINTAL.
(Sp. cántara, cántaro, a wine-measure, is unconnected.)]
A weight, properly 100 (Arabic) pounds, but varying considerably in different parts of the Mediterranean; also, a vessel containing this weight of any article.
1555. Eden, Decades, 229. One Cantar is a hundreth pounde weight.
1615. W. Bedwell, Arab. Trudg., N ij b. s.v. Rethl, Now an hundred Rethels do make a Cantar, or Kintar as some do pronounce it, that is an hundred weight.
1773. Brydone, Sicily, xvii. (1809), 186. Mortars to throw a hundred cantars of cannon-ball or stones.
1802–3. trans. Pallas’s Trav. (1812), I. 488. Vessels sailing under the Turkish flag are paid about one-third less for their freight, computed per Kantar.
1894. Times, 6 Nov., 5/6. The Egyptian cotton crop is estimated at nearly 5,500,000 kantars (the kantar = 99lb.).
