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Peck vs Dozen - What's the difference?

peck | dozen |

As nouns the difference between peck and dozen

is that peck is an act of pecking while dozen is a set of twelve.

As a verb peck

is to strike or pierce with the beak or bill (of a bird) or similar instrument.

As a proper noun Peck

is {{surname|lang=en}.

peck

English

(wikipedia peck)

Etymology 1

From (etyl) pecken, pekken, variant of (etyl) picken, . More at pick.

Verb

(en verb)
  • To strike or pierce with the beak or bill (of a bird) or similar instrument.
  • The birds pecked at their food.
  • * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), (w, Jacob's Room) , Chapter 2
  • The rooster had been known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so that now she carried a stick or took one of the children with her when she went to feed the fowls.
  • To form by striking with the beak or a pointed instrument.
  • to peck a hole in a tree
  • To strike, pick, thrust against, or dig into, with a pointed instrument, especially with repeated quick movements.
  • To seize and pick up with the beak, or as if with the beak; to bite; to eat; often with up .
  • (Addison)
  • * Shakespeare
  • This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas.
  • To do something in small, intermittent pieces.
  • He has been pecking away at that project for some time now.
  • To type by searching for each key individually.
  • (rare) To type in general.
  • To kiss briefly.
  • * 1997 , , (w, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) , Chapter 1; 1998 ed., Scholastic Press, ISBN 0-590-35340-3, p. 2
  • At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls.
    Derived terms
    * pecking order * peckish * woodpecker

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An act of pecking.
  • A small kiss.
  • Etymology 2

    Probably from (etyl) (pek), (pekke), of uncertain origin.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • One quarter of a bushel; a dry measure of eight quarts.
  • They picked a peck of wheat.
  • A great deal; a large or excessive quantity.
  • She figured most children probably ate a peck of dirt before they turned ten.
  • * Milton
  • a peck of uncertainties and doubts

    Etymology 3

    Variant of .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (regional) To throw.
  • To lurch forward; especially, of a horse, to stumble after hitting the ground with the toe instead of teh flat of the foot.
  • * 1928 , (Siegfried Sassoon), Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man , Penguin 2013, p. 97:
  • Anyhow, one of them fell, another one pecked badly, and Jerry disengaged himself from the group to scuttle up the short strip of meadow to win by a length.

    Etymology 4

    Noun

    (-)
  • Discoloration caused by fungus growth or insects.
  • an occurrence of peck in rice
    Derived terms
    * pecky

    Etymology 5

    dozen

    English

    Noun

    (dozens)
  • (countable) A set of twelve.
  • Can I have a dozen eggs, please?
    I ordered two dozen doughnuts.
    There shouldn't be more than two dozen Christmas cards left to write.
    Pack the shirts in dozens , please.
  • A large, unspecified number of, comfortably estimated in small multiples of twelve, thus generally implied to be significantly more than ten or twelve, but less than perhaps one or two hundred; many.
  • There must have been dozens of examples just on the first page.
    There were dozens''' and '''dozens of applicants before the job was posted.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
  • , author=Lee A. Groat , title=Gemstones , volume=100, issue=2, page=128 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are diamond, ruby and sapphire, emerald and other gem forms of the mineral beryl, chrysoberyl, tanzanite, tsavorite, topaz and jade.}}
  • (metallurgy) An old English measure of ore containing 12 hundredweight.
  • * 1957 , H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry , p. 139
  • The dozen as a measure for iron ore remained almost completely constant at 12 cwts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

    Synonyms

    * a great deal of, a lot of, heaps of, hundreds of, loads of, lots of, many, millions of, scores of, scads of, thousands of

    Antonyms

    * few

    Derived terms

    (terms derived from dozen) * baker's dozen * banker's dozen * Botany Bay dozen * cheaper by the dozen * daily dozen * dime a dozen * double dozen * doz (abbreviation ) * dozenal * dozenth * half dozen * long dozen * nineteen to the dozen * * twenty to the dozen

    See also

    * gross