HALF-DOZEN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does half-dozen mean? 

• HALF-DOZEN (adjective)
  The adjective HALF-DOZEN has 1 sense:

1. denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units

  Familiarity information: HALF-DOZEN used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HALF-DOZEN (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units

Synonyms:

6; half-dozen; half dozen; six; vi

Similar:

cardinal (being or denoting a numerical quantity but not order)

 Context examples 

I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to see the ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some half-dozen stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A masterpiece, that story—I knew it when I had read the first half-dozen lines.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Take the cylinders and hear them—the first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify you; then you will know me better.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

By dint of entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to two: these however, he vowed he would select himself.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Turner had a considerable household, some half-dozen at the least.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not one of the men ashore had a musket, and before they could get within range for pistol shooting, we flattered ourselves we should be able to give a good account of a half-dozen at least.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I have noted of some half-dozen cases of the kind, of which the Affair of the Second Stain and that which I am now about to recount are the two which present the strongest features of interest.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)