Killer bunnies in medieval manuscripts. The strange rules of 'dozen.'
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
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The History of the Word Pair
In Carl's grammar in mine, if I'm using the singular form dozen, and I don't have a particular collection of 12 items in mind, I don't pair it with of. But are there English set denoting words that standardly do take an of when you're not talking about a specific collection of items? Yes, there are. The word itself was following the path of development that doesn't have taken centuries earlier, dropping its following of and being used like an adjective. We're not sure when this process began in speech, but we begin to find written evidence in the 1920s.
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