dozen
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdʌzən/
rhymes: -ʌzən
Forms: form: dozens
form: dozen
form: doz
Etymology: From Middle English dozen, dozein, doseyne, from Old French dozaine (“a group of twelve”) (Modern French douzaine), from doze (“twelve”) + -aine (“-ish”), from Latin duodecim (“twelve”) (from duo (“two”) + decem (“ten”)) + -ana (“-ish”).
Senses: examples: text: Can I have a dozen eggs, please?
text: I ordered two dozen doughnuts.
text: There are hundreds of people from each continent in the convention but only a few dozen came from Africa.
text: Pack the shirts in dozens, please.
text: Almost three dozen US service members were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries after the Iranian missile attack earlier this month, the Pentagon said Friday.
ref: 2020 January 26, Leah Asmelash, “Why traumatic brain injuries can be dangerous”, in CNN:
glosses: A set of twelve.
examples: text: There must have been dozens of examples just on the first page.
text: There were dozens and dozens of applicants before the job was posted.
text: Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are diamond, ruby and sapphire, emerald and other gem forms of the mineral beryl, chrysoberyl, tanzanite, tsavorite, topaz and jade.
ref: 2012 March 24, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 14 Jun 2012, page 128:
text: Jessalyn, known to her family as Jessa, was one of the dozens who were hit.
ref: 2022 October 26, Christina Zdanowicz, Claudia Dominguez, Lauren M. Johnson and Sara Smart, “The Waukesha victims included an 8-year-old boy, a loving grandmother and a woman excited to make her debut in the Dancing Grannies”, in CNN:
qualifier: always followed by of
glosses: A large, unspecified number of, comfortably estimated in small multiples of twelve, thus generally implied to be significantly more than ten or twelve, but less than perhaps one or two hundred; many.
raw_tags: as plural only
examples: text: The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
ref: 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 139:
topics: engineering
metallurgy
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
topics: bingo
games
glosses: The number twelve.
Synonyms: sense: followed by of: a large number of
word: a great deal of
word: a lot of
word: heap of
word: hundred of
word: load of
word: lot of
word: many
word: million of
word: score of
word: scad of
word: thousand of
Derived terms: word: baker's dozen
word: banker's dozen
word: Botany Bay dozen
word: buzzin' dozen
word: by the dozen
word: cheaper by the dozen
word: daily dozen
word: decimal dozen
word: devil's dozen
word: dime a dozen
word: double dozen
word: dozenal
word: dozens
word: dozens offer
word: dozenth
word: half a dozen
word: half dozen
word: half-dozen
word: long dozen
word: nineteen to the dozen
word: short dozen
alt: a
word: six of one, half dozen of the other
word: ten to the dozen
word: thirteen to the dozen
word: twenty to the dozen
word: two-dozen
Related terms: gross