Why a dozen?

Answer 1

A dozen comes from a bakers dozen which is 13 one is subtracted off for a chef to test and modify in order to maintain the quality of the product! Hardly. A dozen comes from the French word 'douzieme' which means 12. A baker's dozen was as stated above, 13. It was so named so that bakers made an extra loaf or bun to be sure of giving the correct weight when selling their goods. The medieval laws were very strict in specifying that sellers were not to sell buyers 'short' or they would face heavy fines or even imprisonment. So the bakers covered themselves by adding one more item than the dozen. Why dozens in the first place. Well, it was the Romans who started the use of 12 as a means of subdividing their units of money, the 'As', their foot the 'Pes' and other measures. Their main subdivision was by twelfths. Why 12? Well with ten items we can only easily divide them into 5 groups of 2 or 2 groups of 5. That is, we can have 1/2 of 10 = 5, or 1/5 of 10 or 2. With twelfths, you can have 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3 and even 1/6 of 12 or 6, 3, 4 and 2 respectively. As a quick guide, look at a watch or clock face. What is at the half hour, 6. What at the quarter hour, 3. Then at one third of the hour we have 4. So in a 12 based system, you can easily divide 12 things into 1/2 = 6, 1/3 = 4, 1/4 = 3, 1/6 = 2, 2/3 = 8 and 3/4 = 9. Because of this easy divison, twelve and therefore dozens lasted from the time of the Romans and up to today despite the fact we have a number system based on the number of digits on our two hands. Too bad we didn't evolve with six digits per hand. uhhh...