• (RP) IPA: /ˈhɒɡzˌhɛd/
• (GA) IPA: /ˈhɑɡzˌhɛd/, /ˈhɔɡz-/

hogshead (plural hogsheads)

1. (Britain) An English#Adjective|English measure#Noun|measure of capacity for liquids, containing 63 wine gallons, or about frac 52 imperial gallons; a half pipe#Noun|pipe.

   Synonyms: hhd.

2. A large barrel#Noun|barrel or cask of indefinite contents, especially one containing from 100 to 140 gallons.
   • c. 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, “The VVinters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene iii], page 289 ↗, column 1:

     [...] Now the Shippe boring#English|boaring the Moone with her maine Maſt, and anon ſwallowed with yeſt and froth, as you'ld thruſt a Corke into a hogſhead.

   • 1719 April 24, [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: Printed by W[illiam] Taylor […], OCLC 15864594 ↗; 3rd edition, London: Printed by W[illiam] Taylor […], 1719, OCLC 838630407 ↗, page 100 ↗:

     [T]he Wind blowing from the Shore, nothing came to Land that Day, but Pieces of Timber, and a Hogſhead which had ſome Brazil Pork in it, but the Salt-water and the Sand had ſpoil'd it.

   • 1841, J[ames] Fenimore Cooper, chapter III, in The Deerslayer: A Tale. [...] In Three Volumes, volume III, 1st British edition, London: Richard Bentley, […], OCLC 3787056 ↗, page 71 ↗:

     So set me down as one that will refuse to come into your treaty, though you should smoke a hogshead of tobacco over it.

   • 1853, Solomon Northup, chapter XV, in [David Wilson], editor, Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northrup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana, London: Sampson Low, Son & Co.; Auburn, N.Y.: Derby and Miller, OCLC 14877269 ↗, pages 212–213 ↗:

     As soon as the syrup passes into the coolers, and is met by the air, it grains, and the molasses at once escapes through the sieves into a cistern below. It is then white or loaf sugar of the finest kind—clear, clean, and as white as snow. When cool, it is taken out, packed into hogsheads, and is ready for market.

   • 1854 August 8, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Sounds”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, OCLC 4103827 ↗, page 346 ↗:

     Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, [...]

   • 1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “Restoration of the Fountain”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, OCLC 1072888 ↗, pages 288–289 ↗:

     We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are; [...]

   • 1899 September – 1900 July​, Joseph Conrad, chapter V, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, OCLC 8754022 ↗, pages 38–39 ↗:

     [T]urning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office.

• German: Oxhoft
• Portuguese: meia pipa, hogshead
• Russian: хогсхед

• German: Oxhoft
• Portuguese: tonel
• Russian: хогсхед
• Spanish: bocoy