dozen

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈdʌzn̩/

Noun

dozen (plural dozens)

1. 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.

2. (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.

3. (metallurgy) An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
   • 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, p. 139

     The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Synonyms

• s 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

• (followed by of: a large number of) few

Abbreviations

• doz

Translations

• French: douzaine
• German: Dutzend
• Italian: dozzina
• Portuguese: dúzia
• Russian: дю́жина
• Spanish: docena

Translations

• French: dizaine
• German: Dutzende (of: von)
• Italian: centinaio, migliaio (of: di)
• Russian: десяток
• Spanish: decenas

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