一打 (A dozen)

有讀者問為甚麼「一打雞蛋」不是 A dozen of eggs？

上星期，重案組探員前往旺角警署帶走大約十二名警員問話。They took about a dozen police away for questioning。 英國一名前蘇聯間諜可能由於被人落毒致死，政府正對多個曾接觸死者的人研究可能受到的風險。They are studying the risk to dozens of people who came into contact with him。

Dozen 的用法跟 Hundred 和 Thousand 一樣。當 Dozen 前面有數目字時，Dozen 不加‘s’，後面也沒有連接名詞 ‘of’，等於 Two hundred dollars, three thousand students。所以「一打雞蛋」是 A dozen eggs。其他例子 ：There were only a dozen people at the party是「舞會只有十二個人」。但 Dozens of 是「很多」的意思，
類似 Hundreds of, thousands of 的意思。例如：I have been there dozens of times 是「我去過那裏好多次了」。