If we turn to the classical literature, thenbe sure to 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 - the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Before the appearance of the metric system of measuresseparate things by dozens proved to be extremely convenient. 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, since 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 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 arguments 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 "two" and "ten". After all, a dozen is how much? Twelve.
But, for example, in the English language the nounthe dozen means "set", "mass". And the English verb dozen does not mean "stunned, amazing." As you can see, this has little to do with specific numerals.
In addition, if we try to find words,similar in sound to the "dozen" in Russian, then inexorably we will come to "hefty" and "sdjuzhit", "outstanding". The latter certainly do not have anything 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 bit of "a dozen". This circumstance, of course, was noticed by scholar-philologists. Direct dependence is difficult to find, but if you think about it, then all the above words have a common one.
Versions are said that, perhaps, for the wordwe must thank not only the Romans, but also the Slavs. We can assume that the word "dozen" originally meant a kind of association, which is strong enough to handle something. Or, perhaps, a dozen are some things that are being donated. In this version there is a certain logic. Wherever one person can not cope, the twelve are quite able to do something. And the gift will help both to solve the problem, and to demonstrate the strength and wealth of the donor. This version, expressed, in particular, by philologist Yu. Anisimov, also has the right to exist.
