half a dozen
121
1.0
- noun
:
media docena
- We need half a dozen eggs to make the cake.
- at least half a dozen
- more than half a dozen
- half a dozen times
Since then, I've known probably half a dozen other people.
- Since then, I've known probably half a dozen other people.
- I must visit about half a dozen law schools every year.
- Yes, we, we've been contacted by, I'd say between half a dozen and a dozen.
- It's it's ruined half a dozen Latin American countries, maybe Venezuela.
- But you're both you look, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, right?
- I was sometimes binging and purging, you know, half a dozen or maybe even more times a day.
- But, you know, the, it's on the order of half a dozen.
- And I've started and sold like at least half a dozen or more companies using that basic premise.
- Now, at the time I was, I was a guest host and there were maybe a half a dozen or more comedians that were also guest hosts.
- They could get introduced to them and ask them what are half a dozen things I should do every day?
- So we take like half a dozen people and we document all the carvings in a temple.
- And a large part of that is you ask yourself the question and your conscious mind will throw out half a dozen things.
- So you could install like half a dozen AAA titles, you know, isn't that isn't that ridiculous?
Examples
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I must visit about half a dozen law schools every year.
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I wrote half a dozen letters!
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I must have said at least half a dozen times.
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And there was enough food in front of her to feed half a dozen people.
Fiction book (1991) -
Indeed, they described over half a dozen different forms of this particular sin.
Academic text (1996) -
Since then, I've known probably half a dozen other people.
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Now we've had at least half a dozen, maybe more than that.
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It's been remodeled half a dozen times since.
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Dale Peterson has written half a dozen books on animal behavior.
Academic text (2011) -
Baker now showed me half a dozen national intelligence dailies from half a dozen national intelligence agencies.
Academic text (1997)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
The number one more than five
37
1.0
A group of six things or people
30
1.0
Six things or people that form a group
1
6.0
A set of six things treated as one group
1
5.2
A group of six similar things seen as one unit
A group of six things or the number six
A group of six people who do something together
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a group of six' is directly and compositionally derived from 'half' (one of two equal portions) applied to 'dozen' (twelve), so a learner who knows both constituents can compute half of twelve = six. The article 'a' is merely a determiner and does not obscure the arithmetic composition; this kind of numerical, compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and therefore immediately accessible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Half a dozen comes from the counting word dozen, which means twelve. Taking half of a dozen gives six, so the phrase means 'a group of six'.