Other forms: dozens
A dozen is twelve. A dozen eggs in the box, a dozen roses tied with ribbon, half a dozen buns from the bakery.
After a number it stays singular and drops the of: two dozen eggs, three dozen chairs — never two dozens of eggs. But dozens of, with both the s and the of, means a vague large number instead: dozens of people were waiting outside. A baker's dozen is thirteen, one more than you paid for. Something a dime a dozen is so common it is worth nothing. And in Britain, to talk nineteen to the dozen is to talk fast and not stop.
1noundozenA group of twelve.~98%
“He came back from the shop with a dozen eggs and nothing else.”
2nounscoresA large but vague number; used in the plural with of.~2%
“Dozens of letters arrived in the first week.”
synonyms: scores, loads
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
dozen is a number.
Dozen came through Middle English from Old French dozaine, a group of twelve, built from doze, twelve, plus the ending -aine. Behind that is Latin duodecim, which is simply duo and decem stuck together — two and ten. So a dozen is, at root, a two-ten-ish lot of things.
Latin
duodecim — twelve
Old French
dozaine — a group of twelve
Middle English
dozen
English, today
dozen
Built from
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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA