The gill or teacup is a unit of measurement for volume equal to a quarter of a pint. It is no longer in common use, except in regard to the volume of alcoholic spirits measures. ;In imperial units: ;In United States customary units: In Great Britain, the standard single measure of spirits in a pub was in England, and in Scotland, while the was also a common measure in Scotland, and still remains as the standard measure in pubs in Ireland. After metrication, this was replaced by measures of either, at the discretion of the proprietor. Half of a gill is a jack, or an eighth of a pint. But in northern England, a quarter pint could also be called a jack or a noggin, rather than a gill, and in some areas a half pint could be called a gill, particularly for beer and milk. In Ireland, the standard spirit measure was historically gill. In the Republic of Ireland, it still retains this value, though it is now legally specified in metric units as. In Scotland, there were additional sizes:
There are occasional references to a gill in popular culture, such as in:
Literature
In L. Frank Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz, one of the ingredients required for a magic spell is a gill of water from a dark well. In chapter 19, the obscure unit is used for humor including a pun with the nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill", which also involved a well.
In George Orwell's Animal Farm, Moses the Raven is allotted a gill of beer a day after he returns, with the implication that this is part of his payment for supporting the farm leaders, the pigs.
Dan Simmons' novel, The Terror, makes frequent references to gills of grog and rum.
In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island there are uses of the measure gill, with Israel Hands drinking a gill of brandy in the chapter 'I Strike the Jolly Roger'.
In The Doors song "The Crystal Ship", the line, "the crystal ship is being filled a thousand girls," some people report that "girls" should be "gills".
Television
A gill is also referenced in Archerseason 2, episode 3 when Barry explains to Archer that a litre is, "about 8 gills".
In "Bart the Genius," an episode of The Simpsons, a child tricks Bart by offering, "I'll trade you 1,000 picolitres of my milk for four gills of yours."
Mispronunciation
Because of its more widely used homograph, gill is often mispronounced with a hard 'g' sound.
FX's animated cartoonArcher, mispronounced gill in the episodes "Blood Test" and "Heart of Archness: Part Three".
