If we turn to classical literature, we will certainly come across the word "dozen". How much is this? And what could be considered dozens? How many in a dozen pieces are known for sure. Twelve. And dozens can be considered any objects of the same type, whether animated or not: from pairs of socks to chickens.
The 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 - beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
Initially, the word arose in the vocabulary of sailors, but then it spread everywhere. It has not yet gone out of use, and the question "Dozen is how much?" nobody will perplex. Services, for example, to this day are made for a dozen or half a dozen people. By tradition, half a dozen pack beer cans, bottles of wine, eggs and other food products.
Before the advent of the metric system, it was extremely convenient to consider individual things as dozens. And not only things. 1 dozen is the number of months in a year. There were no problems counting half a dozen, a third or a quarter, since twelve was perfectly divided into two, and three, and four, and six. A dozen gained the approval of the church, because apart from Judas, there were exactly twelve apostles. But if you include the apostle-traitor, you get a damn dozen, or 13, which was considered and continues to be considered an unlucky number and is not divided into 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. Obviously, its origin 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 "multitude", "mass". And the English verb dozen does mean "stun, amaze." As you can see, this has little to do with specific numerals.
In addition, if we try to find words similar in sounding to “dozen” in Russian, then we will inexorably come to “dozen” and “conjure”, “remarkable”. The latter certainly have nothing to do with the numerals. In the Old Russian language there were the words “give” - “give” and “arcs” - “force”. Yes, 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 all the above words have something in common.
Versions are being expressed that perhaps the word should be thanked not only by the Romans, but also by the Slavs. It can be assumed that the word "dozen" originally denoted a kind of association that is strong enough to cope with something. Or perhaps a dozen are just a few donated items. There is a certain logic in this version. Where one person cannot cope, twelve are quite capable of doing something. A gift will help both solve the problem and demonstrate the strength and wealth of the donor. This version, expressed, in particular, by philologist Yu. Anisimov, also has a right to exist.