A Couple of Thoughts on a Dozen of Eggs

(an addendum)

Photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

After mentioning dozen as one of the number words that can make numeric information less precise, I was reminded by my graphics department that his neighbor many years ago in West Virginia, Mary Jane—famed for her homemade cottage cheese and her fondness for Arnold Cake¹—always said “a dozen of eggs.”

A dozen of eggs? I don’t see how it could be wrong, really, but it’s also not what I would say myself. Is it regional, I wondered? British? (Mary Jane, I am informed, came from German stock.)

Until I Googled it, I had no idea how much trouble and confusion this little dozen-related usage issue causes, at least in certain circles. In the English Language Learners community on Stack Exchange, for example, vexed questioners ask, Why not “four dozen of mangoes”? Also: why not “a few/several dozens of eggs”?²

Many educational and reference sources scoldingly relegate “dozen of” to the list of “common errors” in English usage. (By which I know they mean widespread errors, but I still hear a whiff of British put-down in there, as though to say “a dozen of eggs” would be not merely incorrect but common in the sense of vulgar.)

The book Common Errors in English Usage, by Paul Brians, describes the issue this way:

Why isn’t it “a dozen of eggs” when it’s standard to say “a couple of eggs”? The answer is that “dozen” is a precise number word, like “two” or “hundred”; we say “two eggs,” “a hundred eggs,” and “a dozen eggs.”

“Couple” is often used less precisely, to mean “a few,” so it isn’t treated grammatically as an exact number. “A couple eggs” is less standard than “a couple of eggs.”

But here’s what the OED says about dozen:

A group or set of twelve. Originally as a noun, followed by of, but often with the ellipsis of of, and thus in singular = twelve.
Also, used colloq. in plural, either indefinitely or hyperbolically, for any moderately large number

So “a dozen of eggs” was the original usage, but over time we’ve dropped the of, and the meaning of dozen has shifted from a “set” (of twelve) to “twelve.” As Yale linguist Laurence Horn puts it, “‘a dozen’ and ‘a couple’ were originally nominals taking complements, and the former still is in its source language, French.” Une douzaine d’œufs.

The top answer to that question about four dozen mangoes is that it’s correct to say either “I have four dozen mangoes” or “I have four dozen of mangoes.” The answerer, a contributor living in India, adds, “It is very common to use ‘of’ after ‘dozen’ in India”; in American and British usage, the of is “uncommon” but “not wrong either.”

As a contributor to another Stack Exchange discussion (this one about the use of of with dozen and score) points out, dozen “means a set of twelve, but it seems to have evolved into a proper cardinal numeral. Therefore, you say ‘five dozen’ instead of ‘five dozens,’ and omit the ‘of.’”

As Prof. Horn says, dozen “did start out as (dozen (of eggs)), like (couple (of horses)). The OED makes it clear that the earlier uses of the former did indeed have this form—while also revealing a much more understanding attitude toward the cardinality of ‘dozen’ than it does toward ‘couple.’”

Indeed, one of the sample sentences offered by the OED retains the of:

The owner receives 15 cents from the egg company for every one dozen of eggs produced.

Let’s give English Language Learners contributor Kate Bunting, a retired librarian in Derby, UK, the last word:

We usually use dozen without of unless the 12 items are being selected from a particular group—a dozen eggs, but a dozen of your freshest eggs. There’s no use asking why; that’s just the way it is.

1. Originally promulgated by Arnold Felcher, a radio announcer on WSVA in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the recipe involved Cool Whip and what Mary Jane memorably called “Mannn-DAYR-in orange snits.”

2. To the latter question, the top answer was, “Hundred, thousand, pair, dozen, and couple take the same form both in the singular and in the plural only when they are used after numerals or after several or a few.” (Got that?) Though the contributor adds, “In modern English, ‘pairs’ and ‘couples’ are more usual.”