Synonyms for dozen
- twelve
- xii
- boxcars
- dodecahedral
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR DOZEN
Half a dozen of Percival's friends sat at the table with them from time to time.
For good measure a dozen followers of Gaumata had been added.
We found that about a dozen natives had been to the springs while we were away.
But mostly they hunt for this Andrew Lanning a dozen at a time.
In the living-room they found Louise Sampson and half a dozen girls.
The story of Hank Rainer had been told in half a dozen words.
He will paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light.
A dozen times on the way home had Dirk been on the point of consigning it to the gutter.
Shakespeare had travelled far in the dozen years which separate the two plays.
"Faust" is the only play he ever wrote that can rank at all with a dozen of Shakespeare's.
WORD ORIGIN
c.1300, from Old French dozaine "a dozen," from doze (12c.) "twelve," from Latin duodecim "twelve," from duo "two" + decem "ten" (see ten).
The Old French fem. suffix -aine is characteristically added to cardinals to form collectives in a precise sense ("exactly 12," not "about 12"). The dozens "invective contest" (1928) originated in slave culture, the custom probably African, the word probably from bulldoze (q.v.) in its original sense of "a whipping, a thrashing."