different between peck vs dozen

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?k/
• Rhymes: -?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English pecken, pekken, variant of Middle English piken, picken, pikken (“to pick, use a pointed implement”). More at pick.

Verb

peck (third-person singular simple present pecks, present participle pecking, simple past and past participle pecked)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To strike or pierce with the beak or bill (of a bird).

   The birds pecked at their food.

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Chapter 2

     The rooster had been known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so that now she carried a stick or took one of the children with her when she went to feed the fowls.

2. (transitive) To form by striking with the beak or a pointed instrument.

   to peck a hole in a tree

3. To strike, pick, thrust against, or dig into, with a pointed instrument, especially with repeated quick movements.
4. To seize and pick up with the beak, or as if with the beak; to bite; to eat; often with up.

   • 1713 September 14, letter to Joseph Addison, The Guardian, issue 160.

5. To do something in small, intermittent pieces.

   He has been pecking away at that project for some time now.

6. To type by searching for each key individually.
7. (rare) To type in general.
8. To kiss briefly.
   • 1997, J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 1; 1998 ed., Scholastic Press, ?ISBN, p. 2

     At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls.

Derived terms

• pecking order
• peckish
• woodpecker

Translations

Noun

peck (plural pecks)

1. An act of striking with a beak.
2. A small kiss.

Translations

Etymology 2

Probably from Anglo-Norman pek, pekke, of uncertain origin.

Noun

peck (plural pecks)

1. One quarter of a bushel; a dry measure of eight quarts.

   They picked a peck of wheat.
2. A great deal; a large or excessive quantity.

   She figured most children probably ate a peck of dirt before they turned ten.

Translations

Etymology 3

Variant of pick (“to throw”).

Verb

peck (third-person singular simple present pecks, present participle pecking, simple past and past participle pecked)

1. (regional) To throw.
2. To lurch forward; especially, of a horse, to stumble after hitting the ground with the toe instead of the flat of the foot.
   • 1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin 2013, p. 97:

     Anyhow, one of them fell, another one pecked badly, and Jerry disengaged himself from the group to scuttle up the short strip of meadow to win by a length.

Etymology 4

Noun

peck (uncountable)

1. Discoloration caused by fungus growth or insects.

   an occurrence of peck in rice

Derived terms

• pecky

Etymology 5

Noun

peck

1. Misspelling of pec.

English

Etymology

From Middle English dozen, dozein, doseyne, from Old French dozaine (“a group of twelve”), from doze (“twelve”) + -aine (“-ish”), from Latin duodecim (“twelve”) (from duo (“two”) + decem (“ten”)) + -ana (“-ish”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d?z?n/
• Rhymes: -?z?n

Noun

dozen (plural dozens or dozen)

1. A set of twelve.

   Can I have a dozen eggs, please?

   I ordered two dozen doughnuts.

   There shouldn't be more than two dozen Christmas cards left to write.

   Pack the shirts in dozens, please.

2. (as plural only, always followed by of) A large, unspecified number of, comfortably estimated in small multiples of twelve, thus generally implied to be significantly more than ten or twelve, but less than perhaps one or two hundred; many.

   There must have been dozens of examples just on the first page.

   There were dozens and dozens of applicants before the job was posted.
3. (metallurgy) An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
   • 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, p. 139

     The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Synonyms

• (followed by of: a large number of): a great deal of, a lot of, heaps of, hundreds of, loads of, lots of, many, millions of, scores of, scads of, thousands of

Antonyms

• (followed by of: a large number of): few

Abbreviations

• doz

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

Translations

See also

• gross

Anagrams

• Donze, zendo, zoned

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -o?z?n

Noun

dozen

1. Plural form of doos

Anagrams

• zoden, zonde

Scots

Etymology

Related to doze.

Verb

dozen

1. (transitive) To stupefy.
2. (intransitive) To become stupefied.