Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 January 20
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January 20 edit
Half a dozen edit
Can "half a dozen" be used for anything to mean "six"?
- half a dozen of eggs
- half a dozen of slices of pizza
- half a dozen of years
75.185.79.52 (talk) 21:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
- Yes to all those cases, except you do not say "of" - it's "half a dozen eggs", "half a dozen pizza slices", "half a dozen years" (though the last might sound slightly unusual, I wouldn't say it's wrong). -- Arwel Parry (talk) 21:30, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
- Addendum: In English, when using words for round numbers - dozen, score, gross - one generally only uses 'of' for cases where the number of dozens, scores, etc, is not specified, which is also the only time it's common to use the plural form - dozens of people, scores of years. Otherwise, you simply put the quantifier, the number-word, and the thing being counted together - half a dozen eggs, three score years, two gross bolts. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:39, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
- But there are some exceptions. We never say "It's half a dozen o'clock", or "King Henry the Half-a Dozenth". Nor do we say that Jesus had a dozen apostles or that there are a dozen months of the year or a dozen signs of the zodiac. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 23:20, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
- "A dozen months" would not be the standard phrase, but it doesn't strike my ears as wrong in the way "half a dozen o'clock" does. About a million Ghits agree with me [1]. Looking through the examples the Google search throws up, many seem to have a knockabout or facetious quality, and/or they're used for euphony when the term "a dozen" has already been used for something else ("A dozen roses for a dozen months" and "After a dozen months of planning and with a dozen reasons to celebrate" are two examples from the Google search). The use of "dozen" or "half-a-dozen" in some of the contexts strikes me also as somewhat less precise than stating 12 or 6; in that second example, for instance, I doubt there are exactly twelve specific reasons and "dozen" seems to mean "a moderately large but unspecified number". Checking the OED shows they only list this meaning (a "moderately large number") for the plural "dozens", so if people are using "dozen" with an imprecise meaning for things that aren't necessarily precisely tallied (such as "reasons"), then this may be some kind of back-formation from the long-established plural use. Valiantis (talk) 00:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- It turns out that "dozen" comes from Old French for "twelve".[2] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- "A dozen months" would not be the standard phrase, but it doesn't strike my ears as wrong in the way "half a dozen o'clock" does. About a million Ghits agree with me [1]. Looking through the examples the Google search throws up, many seem to have a knockabout or facetious quality, and/or they're used for euphony when the term "a dozen" has already been used for something else ("A dozen roses for a dozen months" and "After a dozen months of planning and with a dozen reasons to celebrate" are two examples from the Google search). The use of "dozen" or "half-a-dozen" in some of the contexts strikes me also as somewhat less precise than stating 12 or 6; in that second example, for instance, I doubt there are exactly twelve specific reasons and "dozen" seems to mean "a moderately large but unspecified number". Checking the OED shows they only list this meaning (a "moderately large number") for the plural "dozens", so if people are using "dozen" with an imprecise meaning for things that aren't necessarily precisely tallied (such as "reasons"), then this may be some kind of back-formation from the long-established plural use. Valiantis (talk) 00:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- My instinct is that "dozen" was generally used for a quantity of items offered for sale, as in "cheaper by the dozen", which is why we don't have a dozen Disciples or a dozen years. I think that if you had paid for a dozen door knobs (for example) then you would expect to get an exact amount. What with decimal currency (there used to be 12 pence in a shilling) and metrication, you can't buy many things in dozens now, but it was a common unit of sale once along with a gross, being 144 or 12 dozen. However, a quick Google has failed to find anyone to back me up on this, so I stand to be corrected. Alansplodge (talk) 01:23, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- We have a section of our Duodecimal article called "Dozenalism" - "The Dozenal Society of America and the Dozenal Society of Great Britain promote widespread adoption of the base-twelve system" - something of a lost cause. Alansplodge (talk) 01:36, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- My instinct is that "dozen" was generally used for a quantity of items offered for sale, as in "cheaper by the dozen", which is why we don't have a dozen Disciples or a dozen years. I think that if you had paid for a dozen door knobs (for example) then you would expect to get an exact amount. What with decimal currency (there used to be 12 pence in a shilling) and metrication, you can't buy many things in dozens now, but it was a common unit of sale once along with a gross, being 144 or 12 dozen. However, a quick Google has failed to find anyone to back me up on this, so I stand to be corrected. Alansplodge (talk) 01:23, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- Nothing wrong with the dozen examples to my (right side up) ears, Jack. Some of the more religious even call Jesus's posse the "dirty dozen".[3][4] Clarityfiend (talk) 10:00, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- I expect they bathed from time to time. One thing about dozens is that you can pack them more squarely: 4 by 3. If you sold things in 10s, they would have to be 5 by 2. Although there's also the "baker's dozen" of donuts, which some define as "twelve of today's and one of yesterday's". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:34, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- It gets more complicated when you say 'half a baker's dozen'.KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:55, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
- Half a baker's dozen would be 6 1/2. A baker's half dozen would be 7. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
- It gets more complicated when you say 'half a baker's dozen'.KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:55, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
- I expect they bathed from time to time. One thing about dozens is that you can pack them more squarely: 4 by 3. If you sold things in 10s, they would have to be 5 by 2. Although there's also the "baker's dozen" of donuts, which some define as "twelve of today's and one of yesterday's". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:34, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- Sometimes, it seems, half a dozen can mean fifteen. —Tamfang (talk) 19:54, 4 July 2013 (UTC)