A dozen is how much? Background

If we turn to the classical literature, we will necessarily encounter the word "dozen." How much is this? And what could be considered dozens? How many in a dozen pieces, it is known absolutely exactly. Twelve. And to consider as dozens any objects of the same type as animate, you can not: from pairs of socks to chickens.

History of this word in Russian

For the first time in Russian, a dozen appeared in Peter's time, that is, at the end of the seventeenth - early eighteenth centuries. Originally the word arose in the vocabulary of sailors, but then spread everywhere. It is still not out of use, and the question "Dozen is how much?" They will not put anyone in a dead end. Services, for example, to this day do for a dozen or half a dozen people. Traditionally, half a dozen pack cans of beer, bottles of wine, eggs and other food.

Before the appearance of the metric system of measures, it was extremely convenient to consider individual things as dozens. And not only things. 1 dozen - this is how many months in a year. There were no problems in counting half a dozen, a third or a quarter, because twelve were perfectly divided into two, and three, and four, and six. A dozen gained the approval of the church, because if you did not count Judas, it was precisely the twelve apostles. But if you include the apostle-traitor, you get a fucking dozen, or 13, which was considered and continues to be considered an unlucky number and does not share anything.

But back to the origin of the word. It causes disputes among scientists. If the goal is to find similar words in other languages, the results will be amazing. This word is in both French and Italian, and there it stands for twelve. Obviously, its origin from the unification of the Latin numerals is "two" and "ten". After all, a dozen is how much? Twelve.

But, for example, in English the noun the dozen means "set", "mass". And the English verb dozen does not mean "stunned, amazing." As we see, this has little to do with specific numerals.

In addition, if we try to find words that are similar in sound to the "dozen" in Russian, then we will inevitably come to "hefty" and "sdjuzhit", "outstanding". The latter certainly have nothing to do with numerals. In the Old Russian language there were words "give" - "give" and "arcs" - "force." And the well-known word "druzhina" also reminds a little of the "dozen". This circumstance, of course, was noticed by scholars of philology. Direct dependence is difficult to find, but if you think about it, then all the above words have a common meaning.

It is said that, perhaps, the word should be thanked not only by the Romans, but also by the Slavs. We can assume that the word "dozen" originally meant a kind of association, which is strong enough to deal with something. Or, perhaps, a dozen are some things that are being donated. In this version there is a certain logic. Where one person can not cope, the twelve are quite able to do something. A gift will help both to solve the problem, and to demonstrate the strength and abundance of the donor. This version, expressed, in particular, by philologist Yu. Anisimov, also has the right to exist.