If we turn to classical literature, we will definitely come across the word "dozen". How much is this? And what could count as dozens? How many in a dozen pieces is absolutely known. Twelve. And you can count by dozens any objects of the same type, both animate and not: from pairs of socks to chickens.
History of this word in Russian
For the first time in Russian, a dozen appeared in the time of Peter the Great, that is, at the end of the seventeenth - beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
The word originally appeared in the lexicon of sailors, but then spread everywhere. It has not gone out of use even now, and the question "A dozen is how much?" will not confuse anyone. Services, for example, are still made 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 advent of the metric system of measures, it was extremely convenient to count individual things in dozens. And not only things. 1 dozen is how many months in a year. There was no problem counting half a dozen, a third or a quarter, since twelve was perfectly divisible by two, and three, and four, and six. A dozen also won the approval of the church, because if you do not count Judas, then there were exactly twelve apostles. But if you include the apostle-traitor, then you get a damn dozen, or 13, which was considered and continues to be considered an unlucky number and is not divisible by anything.
But back to the origin of the word. It causes controversy among scientists. If you set out to find similar words in other languages, the results will be amazing. There is such a word in both French and Italian, and there it means twelve. Its origin is also obvious from the union of the Latin numerals "two" and "ten". After all, a dozen is how much? Twelve.
But, for example, in English the noun the dozen means "many", "mass". And the English verb dozen does mean "stun, amaze." As you can see, this has little to do with specific numbers.
Besides, if we try to find words similar in sound to "dozen" in Russian, we will inexorably come to "hefty" and "sdyuzhi", "remarkable". The latter certainly have nothing to do with numerals. In the old Russian language there were the words "dazhd" - "give" and "dug" - "strength". And the well-known word "squad" is also a bit like a "dozen". This circumstance, of course, was noticed by philologists. It is difficult to find a direct relationship, but if you think about it, then the generalall of the above words have it.
Versions are being expressed that, perhaps, not only the Romans, but also the Slavs should be thanked for the word. It can be assumed that the word "dozen" originally meant some kind of association, which is strong enough to cope with something. Or perhaps a dozen is a number of things that are given as a gift. This version has a certain logic. Where one person cannot cope, twelve are quite able to do something. And the gift will help both solve the problem and demonstrate the strength and prosperity of the donor. This version, expressed, in particular, by the philologist Y. Anisimov, also has the right to exist.
