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10 to the dozen

6 replies

justtryingtodomybest · 14/04/2012 19:41

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.

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Sunscorch · 14/04/2012 19:44

What's the context?

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

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justtryingtodomybest · 14/04/2012 19:46

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

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0bviously0blivious · 14/04/2012 19:50

Ha! That's slow :o

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Sunscorch · 14/04/2012 19:53

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.)

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justtryingtodomybest · 14/04/2012 19:58

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

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Sunscorch · 14/04/2012 20:03

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.

_