Hogshead

A hogshead (abbreviated "hhd", plural "hhds") is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity).

English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) noted the origin is to be found in the name for a cask or liquid measure appearing in various forms in Germanic languages, in Dutch oxhooft (modern okshoofd), Danish oxehoved, Old Swedish oxhuvud, etc.

[2] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament (2 Hen.

Used for sugar in the 18th and 19th centuries in the British West Indies, a hogshead weighed on average 16 cwt / 813kg.

A hogshead was also used for the measurement of herring fished for sardines in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick and Cornwall.

A hogshead in relation to other barrels
United States revenue stamp (proof) for the $2 tax on one hogshead of beer in 1867.
"Sugar hogsheads" from Ten Views in the Island of Antigua , W. Clark, 1823, plate X.