Why is 12 of Something Called “a Dozen”?

In a recent Saturday Night Live sketch titled “Washington’s Dream 2,” George Washington (played by Nate Bargatze) outlines his dream for America to a group of soldiers. “We fight to control our own destiny, to create our own nation,” he says. “And to do our own thing with the English language. … I dream that one day our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it ‘a dozen.’”

“And what other numbers will we have a word for?” someone asks. “None,” Bargatze-as-Washington replies to laughter from the audience. “Only 12 shall have its own word because we are free men.”

It is funny, and a little weird, that English has a word for a group of 12 things. So why is 12 of something called “a dozen”?

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t that exciting—there isn’t any Daniel Dozen who inspired the term due to his obsession with the number 12, and the word isn’t related to doze, so it wasn’t inspired by 12 sleepyheads. Rather, dozen is simply a borrowing from French with Latin roots. The French dozeine is derived from the Latin duodecim, meaning “12.”

Dozen has appeared in English since at least the 1300s. Before the spelling settled on dozen in the 1500s and 1600s, the term appeared as dosain, doseyn, dozein, dosen, dosyn, dossen, and other spellings. The term also could refer to an indefinite number of things, as in a 1734 use by Alexander Pope: “Dangers on Dangers! obstacles by dozens!” That sense is equivalent to “lots of obstacles.” Meanwhile, dozenth has been a synonym for twelfth since the early 1700s.

There are many dozen-related expressions, most famously baker’s dozen for 13 of something. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) explains the phrase like so: “Apparently so called after the former practice among bakers of including a thirteenth loaf when selling a dozen to a retailer, the extra loaf representing the retailer's profit.” Interestingly, that expression has not always meant “13,” as seen in an example from Notes & Queries in 1855: “The ‘baker’s dozen’ is not a phrase, but a fact of daily occurrence in the trade for the number fourteen, or more commonly thirteen.”

Other expressions include a printer’s dozen and a long dozen, which also mean “13.” The phrase to talk nineteen to the dozen means “to talk rapidly or excessively.” There’s also rump-steak and a dozen, which is explained in a Westminster Gazette example from 1893: “The stake being a ‘rump-steak and a dozen’... It was explained that it was a dinner and as much as you liked to drink.” An archaic meaning of dozen referred to a town council; that sense evolved due to such councils tending to have 12 members. So you could say “the local dozen had a dozen members.” 

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