forpet

English

Alternative forms

• forpit

Noun

forpet (plural forpets)

1. (dated, Scotland) A quarter (fourth part) used especially as a unit of mass or capacity.
   • 1807, Letters from a young Farmer to his Father: The Farmer's Magazine, volume 8, Edinburgh, page 472:

     Now, as I learned afterwards […] that straw is used each day, which carried six bolls, one firlot, and three forpets of grain; that each bunch of straw yielded something less than one peck and three forpets; and that the extent of ground which produced the straw for one day's consumption, was seventy hundredth parts of an acre, Scotch measure.

   • 1816, James Cleland, Annals of Glasgow‎^[1], volume 2, page 221:

     The forpet, or one-fourth part of a peck, contains 3 Scotch standard pints and one choppin, is 7¾ inches diameter at the bottom, 6¾ inches at the mouth, and 9⅛ inches deep.

   • 1829, George Robertson, Rural Recollections‎^[2], page 313:

     […] they were gradually disposed of during the winter and ensuing spring, on the Edinburgh street—hawked about in carts, or sold to hucksters, who re-sold them to the town's people, in forpets and half-forpets, at a small advance in price, (about a shilling on a boll,) to reimburse them for their trouble.