What does dozens of people mean?

English Language Learners Definition of dozen : a group of 12 people or things. : large numbers of people or things.

What is dozen in Latin?

A dozen is twelve. Sometimes people use the word dozens to generically mean “a whole lot,” as when you gasp, “There are dozens of seagulls sitting on my car!” Dozen has a Latin root, duodecim, “twelve.”

Is a dozen 12?

There are twelve to a dozen, that’s what most of us learn in grade school. Twelve has been an important number across many civilizations for thousands of years. It’s a highly composite number — it can be evenly divided by a lot of smaller numbers. Twelve is easy to divide up into twos, threes, fours, or sixes.

What does more than a dozen mean?

: many : probably more than 36 She has published several dozen poems.

Why do eggs come in a dozen?

Under a system that came to be known as English units, which was a combination of old Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of measurement, eggs were sold by the dozen. It made sense to sell them that way because one egg could be sold for a penny or 12 for a shilling, which was equal to 12 pennies.

Is a dozen 10 or 12?

A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve.

Who much is a dozen?

A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve. The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive integer groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the Moon, or months, in a cycle of the Sun, or year.

Why is a dozen 12?

A “dozen” is a unit of measurement. It means twelve (12) items of something. The term goes back to duodecim, which means 12 in Latin. Humans might have started to count on a base 12 because there are approximately 12 cycles of the moon in one cycle of the sun.

What is 12 dozen called?

Twelve dozen (122 = 144) are known as a gross; and twelve gross (123 = 1,728, the duodecimal 1,000) are called a great gross, a term most often used when shipping or buying items in bulk.

Why is it called 12 dozen?

Why is 13 A Bakers dozen?

There are a few theories as to why a baker’s dozen became 13, but the most widely accepted one has to do with avoiding a beating. Bakers who were found to be “cheating” their customers by overpricing undersized loaves were subject to strict punishment, including fines or flogging.

Who invented a dozen?

The first to have used the unit were probably the Mesopotamians. 12 dozen (144 items) are a gross. 12 gross (1728 items) are called a great gross.

Which is the correct definition of the word dozen?

dozen (plural dozens or ) A set of twelve. (as plural only, always followed by of) 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.

Who are the people who play the dozens?

A Game of Insults. “The dozens is usually played by two young black males, often surrounded by an interested and encouraging audience of peers in which the players insult and provoke each other with put-downs of each other’s mother or other female family members.

What did a dozen mean in the 16th century?

In the late 16th century a baker’s dozen referred to a batch made in which the customer was given a dozen and the last one constituted the baker’s profit.

What is the object of the game dozens?

According to author John Leland, the object of the game is to stupefy and daze one’s opponents with swift and skillful speech. The meaning of the words, however, is lost in the game. The object of the game is the performance. Remarks in the Dozens can be expressed in rhyme or general language.