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HALF-DOZEN
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units
Synonyms:
6; half-dozen; half dozen; six; vi
Classified under:
Similar:
cardinal (being or denoting a numerical quantity but not order)
Context examples:
As Martin cut the cords of the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies from the publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon him.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
This bad impression was further heightened by Martin's reading aloud the half-dozen stanzas of verse with which he had commemorated Marian's previous visit.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half dead.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The trick had been to fling over the face of his artistry a mask of humanness, and this he had done in the half-dozen or so stories of the horror brand he had written before he emerged upon the high peaks of Adventure, Joy, The Pot, and The Wine of Life.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
