Why do they call a bottle of liquor "a fifth"?!
Why do they call a bottle of liquor "a fifth"?
Answers:
It goes back before the US partially converted to the metric system. A fifth was 1/5 of a gallon. That's been replaced by a 750 ml bottle.
it's a fifth of a gallon.
That is the amount in the container.
its a fifth of a liter or some other metric liquid measurement, im American i dont have to deal with metrics. but its a fifth of some measure of liquid 5 times bigger than the bottle you have.
oh i guess its not metric... anyway, Im American
Being that they are talking about the amount of liquor in the bottle...1/5 of a gallon.
a fifth size bottle of liquor is called a fifth because it relates to 1/5th of a gallon.
3. a fifth part of a gallon of liquor or spirits; 4/5 of a quart (about 750 milliliters).
Because its a fifth of a gallon.
Until they went metric, they were 1/5 US gallon. The 750 ml bottle is not that much different, so the terminology stayed even after the measurement changed.
It's a fifth of a gallon , roughly 25 ounces.The standard sizes for liquor are 750ml, which is a fifth, a liter, and a 1.75L, also known as a half-gallon, because that is what it is in English measurement. In some states, like Georgia, you cannot sell or purchase liquor in anything larger than 1.75L, although the same is not true for wine, hence you can buy a 5L box of Franzia.
issa fif ub a galllunnn *hic*
hi dwayne
A fifth is actually 4/5 of a quart (maybe that applies to liters, now, too).
Before World War II, wine and hard liquor in the USA came in quart bottles. A quart is a quarter of a gallon. During WWII liquor was scarce and expensive. The soldiers drank a lot and they shipped the grain that would normally go into whiskey to our allies, to eat. So, to make scarce supplies go futher, they started putting liquor in fifth of a gallon bottles. They got 5 bottles a gallon instead of four. People who were used to buying a bottle of liquor every day, week or month still bought one, it was just smaller.
A fifth was 25.6 ounces. When the US went semi-metric, 750 ml was the closest to a fifth that was still a sort of even number. (They didn't want to use 761 ml or 742 ml because they would look funny. Hot dogs and butter, for insance, are sold in one-pound packages, not 15.37 ounce packages)
The name "fifth" stuck, though.