10 to the dozen

[justtryingtodomybest]

Someone on The Voice just said this. It just irritates me so much. And I had to explain to my DH why it doesn't make sense.

What's the context?

I can't even begin to imagine what it's supposed to mean.

One of the contestants was describing how nervous she was feeling and how her heart was going "10 to the dozen"

Ha! That's slow :o

Ah!

Well, I see where there confusion comes from... "ten to the dozen" is supposed to imply a high proportion of something. So it's not a big leap from there to simply "a lot".

(I don't know why I couldn't think of the real meaning of the phrase a moment ago. I must be ill.)

But surely it should be nineteen to the dozen? Ten to the dozen would imply slower than normal?

Yes, I agree that the usage was wrong, just understandable :P

A correct usage of "ten to the dozen" might be, say, "Where I live, black cats are ten to the dozen".
Clearly, this means that most cats where I live are black, but a less specific interpretation would just be that there are a lot of black cats where I live.

So the looser interpretation could easily lead to the assumption that "ten to the dozen" wasn't nonsensical, even though it really was.

_