twelve = 'dozen': ten = what? (2025)

dozen is used for 12 in English.
In our language we say 'düzine'

And we also have another word 'deste' to express a group of 10 people or things.

In English, is there a word like this? Or can we use dozen in the same way?

^thanks^

Interesting question, mrve!

No, English doesn't, as far as I know, have a

collective noun for "a group of ten".

We have collective nouns for

groups of ten eg decade for ten years.

We have no convenient and commonly-used term for a set of ten of something.
We just say ten

We could say "a decade" of something, but this is so closely associated with years, and so rarely used in other contexts, that it would sound really odd in a normal context.
I won't be shopping for a decade of eggs any day soon.

It is used in some specialist contexts.
1872 O. SHIPLEY Gloss. Eccl. Terms s.v. Beads 61 The practice of saying fifteen decades of the Ave Maria, with one Our Father after each decade, was invented by St. Dominic.

mrve said:

dozen is used for 12 in English.
In our language we say 'düzine'

And we also have another word 'deste' to express a group of 10 people or things.

In English, is there a word like this? Or can we use dozen in the same way?

^thanks^

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When discussing years, one can refer to tens of years, but most examples of this on the Internet seem to be in scientific contexts.

Not necessarily true, TheAmzngTwinWndr! "A score" is old fashioned, true, and so not commonly used in our modern era. However it is used often due to at least one well-known oratory classic; a famous speech called "the Gettysburg Address" by former American President Abraham Lincoln. First spoken in 1863 during the American Civil War (1861-1865), the first line "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" is widely recognized and often-quoted in the United States.

As to mrve's original question, I researched the issue up and down, but to my own displeasure there is no version of the word "dozen" that is the equivalent of the number ten in the English language. In my opinion this is yet another instance of a limitation that English has with communicating ideas in their entirety!

FYI, this website will completely explain numerical words (and the reason for their seemingly erratic nominative patterns), prefixes, and their Latin origins found in the English language.

As a matter of fact, 'decade' does mean 'set of ten' and is used also in contexts other than years. Admittedly, other uses are not common.

Catholics speak of 'decades of the rosary' meaning the sets of ten prayers to be recited as you pass the beads through your fingers.
When the future author Samuel Butler met the future politician William Moorhouse in New Zealand, the latter was reading a book entitled 'Machiavellian Discourses on the first Decade of Livy'. Here 'decade' means 'ten books'.

In my opinion this is yet another instance of a limitation that English has with communicating ideas in their entirety!

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Any chance you could give us half a dozen more examples? By a Darwinian process of eliminating all competition, the English language has evolved successfully into the most functional medium for linguistic communication in human history. The reason we don't need a word to describe a group of ten is due to the fact that "ten" does the job perfectly by itself. If there were to be a demand for such a word, somebody would soon invent it.

"Decad", "decade" and "decury" have all been used, in the past, to describe a set of ten items: the primary definition of "decade" in the Shorter OED does not refer to a period of time (i.e. ten years), but rather to the meaning given by Wandle, above, i.e. ten books. The second definition is "a group or series of ten".

Packard said:

In New York, which has a large Jewish population, "minion" is understood by many to mean a group of ten men, but loosely used it can include women.

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That would be minyan and I have never heard it used outside of the very narrow definition of the amount of men necessary to hold a religious service.

ewhite said:

That would be minyan and I have never heard it used outside of the very narrow definition of the amount of men necessary to hold a religious service.

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Ah, but I have. (But I was not aware of the spelling.)

This from Urban Dictionary:

Packard said:

This from Urban Dictionary:

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With 7 up and 5 down votes after being posted for 5 years. It also says it's a Jewish word for "homeboy" or "ghetto".

Myridon said:

With 7 up and 5 down votes after being posted for 5 years. It also says it's a Jewish word for "homeboy" or "ghetto".

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Notwithstanding that, I've heard it used in exactly that manner. Perhaps it is a New York (Long Island) thing.

Packard said:

Notwithstanding that, I've heard it used in exactly that manner. Perhaps it is a New York (Long Island) thing.

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Sorry, but no. Not New York, not Long Island. And certainly not homeboy (I think that would be "landsman").

Aside from decade, I don't think there is an English word for "tens", except of course, tens.

When translating from French, which has the word dizaine meaning "about ten", I find that more often than not I can translate it as dozen without losing meaning.

There are two reasons: one is that these words are necessarily vague, and that dizaine can mean anything from eight to 12; the other is that it's very often used in the plural, and there's absolutely no difference between "several tens of people" cross and "several dozen people".

Doesn't work when buying eggs, though.