Demiard

The demiard is a traditional unit of volume originating in pre-revolutionary France.

After the revolution, when the metric system was introduced in France, the demiard persisted in Louisiana, Quebec, and other French-speaking areas of North America.

It has been asserted that it was originally half of an ard, an otherwise unknown unit.

In North America, the three unit names became associated with American and British units of similar sizes, where the demiard was a half-pint, the chopine was a pint, and the pinte was a quart.

[3] In modern Canadian usage, the demiard is equal to 284 millilitres, or half a British Imperial pint.

Glass milk bottles from 1950s Quebec. The large bottle is a pinte (quart), the middle size a chopine (pint) and the small size a demiard (half-pint). [ 1 ] The latter was used for cream .