Quote:
Originally Posted by enydia Thank you for your reply.
But I am still confused. |
Here's my simple explanation (I do hope it is so):
[you go to a shop to buy eggs; you say:]
Can I have half a dozen eggs, please? if you want to buy only 6 eggs
Can I have a dozen eggs, please? if you want to buy 12 eggs
Can I have two dozen eggs, please? if you want to buy as many as 24 eggs
In the last sentence above, you can't use either the plural
dozens or the singular
dozen followed by
of.
However, you could say:
Can I have some/a few/several dozen eggs, please? if you wanted to buy more than just a dozen eggs; it could well be 36/48 or more, or less, but always a quantity of something times 12
[once again you go to a shop; you say:]
Can I have (some/a few/several) dozens of eggs, please? if you want to buy a lot of eggs, without saying exactly how many; you can omit the words in brackets, unlike in the sentence above. You would get the exact quantity on the invoice and it might well be 100/1000 etc. eggs so that you knew what you were going to pay for.
