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."
双语例句
1. Ernest Brown lives about a dozen blocks from where the riots began.
欧内斯特·布朗住在离骚乱发生处几个街区远的地方。
来自柯林斯例句
2. She loaded me down with around a dozen cassettes.
她塞给我十几盒磁带。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He sat behind a table on which were half a dozen files.
他坐在一张放有6个文件夹的桌子后面。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The project has gone through nearly a dozen years of planning.
该项目已历经近12年的规划。
来自柯林斯例句
5. The riot left four people dead and several dozen injured.