dozen
part of speech
noun (dozen, dozens)
meaning for a pupil
1) A dozen is twelve: a dozen eggs is 12 eggs. tree →
2) Dozens means a lot, many: «dozens of people». tree →
3) A dozen can also mean twelve strokes of the cane given as a punishment at school. tree →
sense in the lessons
a group of twelve: «N dozen» is N × 12; eggs, rolls and cookies are often sold by the dozen; «half a dozen» is 6; a «baker's dozen» is 13; phrases: «a dozen», «half a dozen», «dozens of», «by the dozen»
examples
- Mum buys 3 dozen eggs. tree →
- Mum buys nine and a half dozen eggs. tree →
- A baker made 2 dozen rolls and sold 15. tree →
- A dozen eggs come in one box. tree →
- Half a dozen is six. tree →
- Dozens of birds sat on the wires. tree →
- A baker's dozen is 13, one extra for luck. tree →
- We need two dozen cupcakes for the party. tree →
- I would rather lose a dozen cherry trees than that you should tell one false-hood." tree →
note
«A dozen is twelve.» «N dozen» is N × 12; «half a dozen» is 6; «N and a half dozen» is N × 12 + 6. After a number, say «3 dozen», not «3 dozens».
In the corpora
- Job hunting means searching adverts and sending applications, often dozens before getting anywhere; many get no reply at all.
- Falling is part of learning to dance, and many viral videos took the dancer dozens of tries.
- Modern hens can lay around three hundred eggs a year, while wild junglefowl lay only a few dozen.
- Some cats have extra toes, and Ernest Hemingway's old house in Florida still has dozens of cats, many with six toes.
- Your phone holds dozens of metals, among them lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «dozen» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.