dozen: [13] Dozen traces its ancestry back to the Latin word for ‘twelve’, duodecim. This was a compound formed from duo ‘two’ and decem ‘ten’. This gradually developed in the postclassical period via *dōdece to *doze, which, with the addition of the suffix -ēna, produced Old French dozeine, source of the English word. => duodenum
dozen (n.)
c. 1300, from Old French dozaine "a dozen," from doze (12c.) "twelve," from Latin duodecim "twelve," from duo "two" + decem "ten" (see ten).
The Old French fem. suffix -aine is characteristically added to cardinals to form collectives in a precise sense ("exactly 12," not "about 12"). The dozens "invective contest" (1928) originated in slave culture, the custom probably African, the word probably from bulldoze (q.v.) in its original sense of "a whipping, a thrashing."
例文
1. アーネスト?ブラウンlives about a dozen blocks from where the riots began.
アーネスト?ブラウンは、騒乱が起きたいくつかのブロックから離れた場所に住んでいる。
2.She loaded me down with around a dozen cassettes.
彼女は私にテープを十数箱詰めてくれた。
3.He sat behind a table on which were half a dozen files.
6つのフォルダが置かれたテーブルの後ろに座っている。
4.The project has gone through nearly a dozen years of planning.
このプロジェクトは12年近く計画されている。
5.The riot left four people dead and several dozen injured.