/ˈdʌzən/
OriginFrom 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”).
- A set of twelve.
“Can I have a dozen eggs, please?”
“I ordered two dozen doughnuts.”
“There are hundreds of people from each continent in the convention but only a few dozen came from Africa.”
- 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.
“There must have been dozens of examples just on the first page.”
“There were dozens and dozens of applicants before the job was posted.”
“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, ”
- An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
“The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”
- The number twelve.
Formsdozens(plural) · dozen(plural) · doz(alternative)