Word.ws English Dictionary

half a dozen

half a dozen numeral: six (6); often used approximatively.

Numeral

half a dozen

  1. Six (6); often used approximatively.
    • Anstruther laughed good-naturedly. “[…] I shall take out half a dozen intelligent maistries from our Press and get them to give our villagers instruction when they begin work and when they are in the fields.”1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 5, in Pulling the Strings
    • The good news is that £800 million is allocated to new rolling stock, £200m for stations (including six new ones), and a further £736m to transform the Valley Lines, a network of half-a-dozen services that run up the valleys from Cardiff.2019 December 18, Christian Wolmar, “Overdue investment and a better deal for Welsh railways”, in Rail, page 54
  2. six
    Synonyms:
    half dozen

half a dozen meaning in Malay

half a dozen in Malay

six
setengah dozen

Synonyms of half a dozen

Forms of half a dozen

alternative formhalf-a-dozen

Words formed from half a dozen

Questions about half a dozen

What does half a dozen mean?
Half a dozen means six (6); often used approximatively.
What is half a dozen in Malay?
Half a dozen in Malay is setengah dozen. See Half a dozen meaning in Malay.
What part of speech is half a dozen?
Half a dozen is a numeral.

Words near half a dozen in the dictionary

  1. Haleys
  2. half
  3. half a brain
  4. half a century
  5. half a chance
  6. half a dozen
  7. half a grunter
  8. half a head
  9. half a loaf is better than no bread
  10. half a loaf is better than no loaf
  11. half a loaf is better than none

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half a dozen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “half a dozen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half_a_dozen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.