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dozen. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
dozen, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
dozen in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
dozen you have here. The definition of the word
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English
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”).
Pronunciation
Noun
dozen (plural dozens or dozen)
- A set of twelve.
- Can I have a dozen eggs, please?
- I ordered two dozen doughnuts.
- There shouldn't be more than two dozen Christmas cards left to write.
- Pack the shirts in dozens, please.
- (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.
- There must have been dozens of examples just on the first page.
- There were dozens and dozens of applicants before the job was posted.
2012 March, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 14 June 2012, page 128: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.
- (metallurgy) An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 139:The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
- (bingo) The number twelve.
Abbreviations
Synonyms
- (followed by of: a large number of): a great deal of, a lot of, heaps of, hundreds of, loads of, lots of, many, millions of, scores of, scads of, thousands of
Antonyms
- (antonym(s) of "followed by of: a large number of"): few
Derived terms
Descendants
Translations
twelve
- Afrikaans: dosyn
- Albanian: duzinë (sq)
- Arabic: دَزِّينَة f (dazzīna), دَسْتَة f (dasta)
- Egyptian Arabic: درزن m (darzan), دستة f (dasta)
- Gulf Arabic: درزن (dɐrzɐn)
- Aragonese: ducena
- Armenian: դյուժին (hy) (dyužin)
- Aromanian: duzinã f
- Azerbaijani: düjün
- Belarusian: ту́зін m (túzin)
- Bulgarian: ду́зина (bg) f (dúzina)
- Burmese: ဒါဇင် (my) (dajang)
- Catalan: dotzena (ca) f
- Chinese:
- Cantonese: 打 (daa1)
- Hokkien: 打 (táⁿ)
- Mandarin: 打 (zh) (dá)
- Czech: tucet (cs) m
- Danish: dusin (da) n, tylvt c
- Dutch: dozijn (nl) n
- Esperanto: dekduo
- Estonian: tosin
- Faroese: tylft f
- Fiji Hindi: darjan (hif)
- Finnish: tusina (fi), kymmenisen (fi) (about ten)
- French: douzaine (fr) f
- Galician: ducia (gl) f
- German: Dutzend (de) n
- Greek: ντουζίνα (el) f (ntouzína)
- Ancient: δωδεκάς f (dōdekás)
- Haitian Creole: douzèn
- Hebrew: תְּרֵיסָר (he) (t'resár)
- Hindi: दर्जन (hi) f (darjan)
- Hungarian: tucat (hu)
- Icelandic: tylft f, dúsin n, dúsín f
- Ido: dek-e-du (io), dekeduo (io)
- Indonesian: lusin (id)
- Irish: dosaen m
- Italian: dozzina (it) f
- Japanese: ダース (ja) (dāsu)
- Khmer: ឡូ (km) (lou)
- Korean: 다스 (ko) (daseu)
- Lao: please add this translation if you can
- Latvian: ducis m
- Macedonian: дузина f (duzina)
- Malayalam: ഡസൻ (ml) (ḍasaṉ) (borrowed from English)
- Manx: dussan m
- Maori: taihana
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål: dusin (no) n, tylft f
- Nynorsk: dusin n, tylft f
- Occitan: dotzena (oc) f
- Old Norse: tylft f
- Persian: دوجین (fa) (dojin)
- Polish: tuzin (pl) m
- Portuguese: dúzia (pt) f
- Romanian: duzină (ro) f
- Russian: дю́жина (ru) f (djúžina)
- Scottish Gaelic: dusan m
- Serbo-Croatian:
- Cyrillic: туце n, туцет m
- Roman: tuce (sh) n, tucet m
- Slovak: tucet m
- Slovene: ducat (sl) m
- Sorbian:
- Lower Sorbian: dwanastk m, ducent m
- Spanish: docena (es) f
- Swahili: dazani (sw)
- Swedish: dussin (sv) n, tolft (sv) c
- Thai: โหล (th) (lǒo)
- Turkish: düzine (tr)
- Ukrainian: дю́жина f (djúžyna)
- Urdu: درجن f (darjan)
- Vietnamese: tá (vi)
- Volapük: degtelat (vo)
- Walloon: dozinne (wa) f
- Welsh: dwsin (cy) m
- Yiddish: טוץ m or n (tuts)
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See also
Anagrams
Dutch
Pronunciation
Noun
dozen
- plural of doos
Anagrams
Scots
Etymology
Related to doze.
Verb
dozen
- (transitive) To stupefy.
- (intransitive) To become stupefied.