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Half dozen   /hæf dˈəzən/   Listen
Half dozen

adjective
1.
Denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units.  Synonyms: 6, half-dozen, six, vi.






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"Half dozen" Quotes from Famous Books



... to go anywhere that Mother Bunker and Daddy went. Something exciting was always happening to all of the six little Bunkers. But we will let you guess, with Russ and Rose and Vi and Laddie and Margy and Mun Bun, where the next exciting adventures of the half dozen youngsters ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope

... have been greater had he been covertly stealing his way through a band of hostile Indians. The spot chosen for the meeting was a grass plot bounded on three sides by shrubbery and on the fourth by the wall of the little square within which had been laid to rest the mortal remains of some half dozen generations of the Burwells. Though the grass was green and the sky above was of the deep steely hue which the late afternoon brings; yet the thick shrubbery which secluded the place gave it an air of wildness, and the tops of the tall monuments gleaming white over the old ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... Jerry's equipment. His own cheap brass reel and jointed cane pole, with heavy linen line, was only an excuse. Throw-lines with a half dozen hooks were his favorites, and a big catfish his highest aim. As soon as the boat hit the dam he began getting out his lines. Jerry jumped ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... departure. At the end of two long lines of foot-guards stood the cart with a powerful black horse harnessed to it. At the head of the cart was placed the coffin. On the right were several mounted grenadiers: on the left, some half dozen javelin-men. Soldiers were stationed at different points of the street to keep off the mob, and others were riding backwards and forwards to maintain an open space for ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... 1666, existed until 1807. "It is built," says Kalm, "in the form of a cross. It has a round steeple, and is the only church that has a clock." The oldest inhabitant can yet recall, from memory, the spot where it stood, even if we had not the excellent drawing made of it with a half dozen of other Quebec views, by an officer in Wolfe's fleet, Captain Richard Short. It stood on the site recently occupied by the shambles, in the Upper Town, facing the Russell House. Captain Short's pencil bears again testimony to ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... community for the policing of the devastated region, and there is no doubt it is greatly needed. Happily, Nemesis does not sleep this time in the face of such provocation as is given her by these atrociously inhuman human beings. It is a satisfaction to record that something more than a half dozen of them have been dealt with as promptly and as mercilessly as they deserve. For such as they there should ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... great instrumental compositions are few in number in comparison with the voluminous and uneven output of his predecessors. Thus from Haydn we have 125 symphonies, from Mozart about 40, from Beethoven 9. Of Haydn's symphonies possibly a half dozen have permanent vitality; of Mozart's four; of Beethoven's all, with the possible exception of the experimental first. Condensation of subject matter, conciseness of style, a ceaseless exaltation of quality above quantity are the prominent features ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... course, but we had the advantage of arms. 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 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... There was a rag carpet on the floor; a pine bureau neatly varnished; a half dozen plain but whole chairs; a bedstead, upon which the bedding was scrupulously neat; a pine table, upon which lay a much-thumbed leather-bound family Bible and a few religious books; and between the windows, over the bureau, hung a common engraving ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... Walraven obtained all the information he desired concerning Miss Mollie Dane. Some half dozen of the actors were stopping at the hotel, and proved very willing, under the influence of brandy and water, to give the free-handed stranger Miss Dane's biography as far ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... Icilius Timoleon Libri-Carucci della Sommaja, born at Florence in 1803; died at Fiesole in 1869. His Histoire des Sciences Mathematiques appeared at Paris in 1838, the entire first edition of volume I, save some half dozen that he had carried home, being burned on the day that the printing was completed. He was a great collector of early printed works on mathematics, and was accused of having stolen large numbers of them ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... his pocket. He set about counting the bills, a calculating frown in his eyes. Then he stared at the ceiling, summing up. "I'll do it," he said, after a moment of mental figuring. He told off a half dozen bills and slipped them into his pocket. The wallet sought its usual resting place for ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... slowly approaching the little group of girls, with arms waving and the weird "woo-oo-oo" becoming louder and louder. Two of the half dozen who had stood their ground now turned and ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... half dozen times, perhaps, I had raised my left hand carefully, only to have it flapped back at me as if I were slapping myself in the face. For we were in the pilot's seat of America's largest bombing plane, grandstand seats with nothing between us and the show ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... in early boyhood, and grew up without any schooling or any definite work. For the most part he did odd jobs as they were offered. He called himself a carpenter. But in a day when the outfit of tools numbered only about a half dozen, and when every man was mainly his own carpenter, this trade could not amount to much. Employment was ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... gloom Justin smiled. "Where did you learn it all, captain? You are as wise as if you had been married to a half dozen wives." ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... per week, and maintained himself stout and healthy. Sir John Pringle knew a lady of ninety who lived on pure fat meat. Glower of Chelmsford had a patient who lived ten years on a pint of tea daily, only now or then chewing a half dozen raisins or almonds, but not swallowing them. Once in long intervals she took a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... pre-view, which lasted an hour and a half, John had but few chances to converse with Consuello. She was busy with Bonwit, the director, and a half dozen others whom John decided were the technicians whose business it was to revise the film before it was released. They sat grouped in a semi-circle and several times certain scenes were flashed on the screen ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... a pleasure to say, without reservation, that the half dozen plays before us are finely true, strong, telling examples of dramatic art.... Sure to find their way speedily to the stage, justifying themselves there, even as they justify themselves at a reading as pieces of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... jardiniere bearing a three-foot palm on the top story in the northwest, a carved bracket with a sheaf of Florida grasses in the southeast, and a tall wooden clock that won't go in the southwest; a brass tea kettle hanging from a wrought iron frame beside a fragile stand that carries a half dozen of still more fragile 'hand-painted' teacups and saucers; lambrequins and heavy curtains at all the windows and most of the doors, a big combination gas and electric chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling, bedangled with jumping jacks, Christmas ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... eleven minutes, and the last three in six minutes more, having ended his repast eight minutes sooner than he had designed—possibly owing to the pangs of hunger, since he expressed a willingness to occupy the spare moments with devouring another half dozen pies. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... act the part of highway robbers; some half dozen or more of them, will waylay and attack a poor humble-bee which is returning with a sack full of honey to his nest, like an honest trader, jogging home with a well filled purse. They seize the poor bee, and give him at once to understand that they must have the earnings of his industry. They do ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... didn't you take a half dozen cookies when she passed them around the same as the rest of us did? You only ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... having in a few minutes cut the requisite half dozen or so of holes, guided the plank on rollers towards a pile, where it was laid, to be afterwards carried off to the carriage-builders, who would fit it as one side of a carriage-frame to its appropriate fellow-planks, which had all been prepared ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Otto is one of those uncomfortable Germans who in his own amazing personality expresses the National ideal of earnestness; Otto is frightfully in earnest in his cups, or over his half dozen eggs for breakfast—as you ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... a half dozen records had been played. He sat down, ignoring the water that dripped from him. "Listen, our friends just rounded the northern tip of the island in the boat and they're heading south just inside the eastern reef. What do you make ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... scarcely believe, that I, too, have had my experience on the subject? Accident once made me an attache to our envoy at Naples. The life is an easy one. Idleness was never more perfectly reduced to a system, than among the half dozen functionaries to whom the interests of the British empire were entrusted in the capital of the Lazzaroni. As the Frenchman said of the Academy, 'We had nothing to do, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... drawn across it—from that tomtom up to the instruments we have today, which make the common air blossom with melody. I saw, too, the paintings, from the daub of yellow mud up to the pieces which adorn the galleries of the world. And the sculpture, from the rude gods, with six legs and a half dozen arms, and the rows of ears, up to the sculpture of now, wherein the marble is clad with such loveliness that it seems almost a sacrilege to touch it; and in addition I saw there ideas of books—books written upon skins of wild beasts, books written ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... of the party, consisting of Major Warfield, Capitola, Mrs. Condiment, and some half dozen neighbors, remained gathered around the open trap-door, waiting, watching, and listening for ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... not passing myself off as anything but an ordinary business hustler, am I—just under salesman to a typewriter concern? I shouldn't like to think I'd got in here on any bluff. I guess I sling in slang every half dozen words——." ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... innocent youth better than all others, I claim to be that man. To seduce one into any vicious habit when uncontaminated, is a thing I would scorn to do. And the pleasure which I feel, when I reflect upon it, of having actually saved some half dozen from ruin, is to me unspeakable. But for this I know I am never to be credited; for Mr. Green has informed us that the gambler is hardened, for he never goes to church, and if you reach him at all it must be ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... wiped her hands on her apron, and walking to the garden, picked up the spade and began turning great pieces of earth. She had never done rough farm work, such as women all about her did; she had little exercise during the long, cold winter, and the first half dozen spadefuls tired her until ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... two very strong strips of hide across the front part of the framework, and in addition passed at least a half dozen stout bands of hide ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... frightened look of inquiry, the king said, "Only a half dozen troopers whom I always keep in my anteroom to be ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... might spend the summer. I reasoned that it was a country lawyer's business to know everybody in his county, and I hoped that Reuben remembered me well enough to refer me only to the kind with whom I would care to affiliate. I did not write letters often, my correspondence averaging perhaps a half dozen epistles a year, and so I signed my name to this one before reading it over. Then I recollected one of the earliest injunctions of my father: "Be very careful what you sign your name to," so I deliberately reread the missive before me. It was all ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... demanded Coach Luce, a light glowing in his eyes. "Well, I should say so. Why, Pop Gint was the famous old trainer who taught Everett and a half dozen other of our best national pitchers all they first learned about style. Pop Gint is the best trainer of pitchers ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... answer. He shouted at his team, that started on the run, but Zeb Foraker's St. Bernard, who could lick any dog in Carcajou singly, chanced to leap over the garden fence and come at them. In a moment a half dozen dogs were piled up in a fight. Stefan stepped into the snarl. A moment later he had the biggest animal, that was supposed to weigh close to two hundred, by the tail. With a wonderful heave he lifted it up and swung it over his master's ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... conscious of a sense of nearness; I am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family some half dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I love, and with a love that is foolish—mad, limitless; I love them better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet Protestant ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... churchwardens, that we would all meet, in the dusk of the evening, or rather as soon as it was dark, and that every one should throw a stone into the chancel window. When the time arrived, this was religiously performed; and I believe myself and some half dozen more remained, while the rest were scampering off, and had a second throw, although the first did ample execution, and made a tremendous crash, particularly at that still hour of the night. The noise ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... man. His capacity was certainly great, whatever might be said of his intellect; for I have seen him rise without the least appearance of elevation, after having swallowed the customary half dozen. He laughed to scorn all modern potations of wishy-washy French and Rhine wines—deeming them unfit for the palate of a true-born Englishman. Port, Sherry, and Madeira were his only tipple—the rest, he would assert, were only ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... inimical to my taste—was among the first to boil down the number of etudes. He did this in his famous preface to the Cramer Studies. Nevertheless, his list is too long by half. Who plays Moscheles? Who cares for more than four or six of the Clementi, for a half dozen of the Cramer? I remember the consternation among certain teachers when Deppe and Raif, with his dumb thumb and blind fingers, abolished all the classic piano studies. Teachers like Constantine von ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... industry" had been slain by their country's foe; the courtrooms were filled with eager mobs hoping that evidence would be secured against some one of the many suspects. Gradually, however, the interest decreased, as Josie had predicted it would. A half dozen suspects were held for further examination and the others released. New buildings were being erected at the airplane plant, and although somewhat crippled, the business of manufacturing these necessary engines of war was soon going ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... much trouble to their French rulers. Every revolution among the Kabyles is a religious movement, set in motion by the wild enthusiasm of the "saints." The religious orders of Kabylia, all of them differing in various degrees from Turkish Mohammedanism, are of some half dozen varieties, adapted to minds of various cultivation. Some, as that of Sidi-Yusef-Hansali, are mild in their rites and of a purely didactic or religious nature. This latter sect originated in Constantina, comprises two thousand brothers or khouans, and was in 1865 under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... to obey. Frank leaped after him. Hurriedly a small boat was gotten out and launched. A half dozen sailors sprang in and took up the oars. Frank and Jack leaped in ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... which had never faded from his brain, of his next sight of her, as she sat on the old stone wall, with the gay maple-leaves and blackberry-vines in her lap. From that day to the present, he had seen her only a half dozen times, and only for a chance greeting as they had passed each other in the street; but it seemed to him that she had never been really absent from him, so conscious was he of her all the time. So absorbed was he in these thoughts that a half-hour was gone ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... tower stands over the entrance door, at the west end of the church. The organ and choir (at the same end) rendered the finest music that I heard in England. There were several very highly cultivated voices among those of the half dozen ladies that occupied the space in ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... hamper the development of transcontinental railroads in this country, and of these only one, the Rockies, is a serious obstacle to effective transportation. Our railroad mileage is enormous, a half dozen transcontinental lines being supplemented by numerous smaller roads and feeding lines. We have more than 2000 miles of canals in operation. Cheap and rapid transportation between the different parts of the country, supplemented by adequate means of communication by telephone, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... said the housekeeper solemnly, 'the things is different. It's my belief there ain't half a dozen men on the face o' the earth that is fit to have wives, and one o' the half dozen I never see yet. Christopher's a good brother, mum, as you say; as good as you'll find, maybe,—I've nought against him as sich; but then, I ain't his wife, and that makes all the differ. There's no tellin' what men don't expect o' their wives, when ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... rest of the trip as comfortably as possible, until it was time to throw the asteroid into a series of ever-tightening elliptical orbits around Earth, known as braking ellipses. The method would use Earth's gravity to slow them down to the proper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... depot the girls had a little waiting-room of their own. It was quite rough, but cosy, with a fire and an oven and a mirror, and table and wooden chairs. The half dozen girls who knew John Thomas only too well had arranged to take service this Sunday afternoon. So, as the cars began to come in, early, the girls dropped into the waiting-room. And instead of hurrying off home, they sat around the fire and had a cup of tea. Outside ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... the late afternoon sun glinted on this jungle and threw back spears of intense light. Over the iron ridges of the Catalinas the fleet swept at an elevation of several thousand feet. Westward, numerous huge globes could be seen drifting south. The commander signaled a half dozen of his ships to pursue ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg

... was doing on top of a rock. All muskrats have favorite eating places—a rock, a stranded log, a tree boll that leans out over the water, and always a pretty spot—whither they bring food from a distance, evidently for the purpose of eating it where they feel most at home. This one had gathered a half dozen big fresh-water clams onto his dining table, and sat down in the midst to enjoy the feast. He would take a clam in his fore paws, whack it a few times on the rock till the shell cracked, then open it with his teeth and devour the morsel inside. He ate leisurely, tasting each ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... figures have already shown, an unusually mild one, even for a Louisiana December, and the finger of the clock drawing by and by toward the last hour of sunlight, some half dozen of Frowenfeld's townsmen had gathered, inside and out, some standing, some sitting, about his front door, and all discussing the popular topics of the day. For it might have been anticipated that, in a city where so very little English was spoken and no ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... stop a car on its way up or down, McCarthy stumped down a flight of stairs, followed more leisurely by the calmly unhurried Darrow. Here the same performance was repeated. A half dozen men by now had joined them. So they progressed from story to story until an elevator boy, attracted by their frantic shouts, stopped to see what was the matter. Immediately the door was slid back on its runners, McCarthy seized the astonished ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... from the opposing thicket, and a half dozen shots were fired. Bullets again cut twigs and leaves over Robert's head, but all of them ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... government posts; a few teachers from the government schools; a bunch of cowboys from Flagstaff; half a dozen Apaches who had come up to Oraibi from an encampment near the Bottomless Pits; a dozen tourists from a half dozen different cities in the east attracted from tourist curiosity; three interpreters, one of whom happened to be in government employ and had been caught at Oraibi and detained there by an accident to his team on the way to Shungapavi. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... later half dozen men of the Republican Guard, with corporal and sergeant in command, were in the small apartment on the fifth floor of the tenement house in the Rue Jolivet. They had demanded an entry in the name of the Republic, had roughly hustled petite ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... I have to remain here at any rate to collect Anstruther's check in London. I have in my favor all the facts of Anstruther's story. I happen also to have Anstruther's P. P. C. card. I will bring you the picture you want, or a half dozen copies. Will you trust to me? ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... top of the embankment, and fell behind a rock. And now a half dozen of the little demons were coming across the trail to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... certain ring which can give you off-hand the exact poundage of Nelson when he met Gans, or the fastest time in which the Futurity has ever been run, or the name of the latest female whose intimate measurements have just been declared by one of a half dozen greatest living artists to be a reproach to the Venus de Milo, all without wrinkling its forehead in thought—that portion of Broadway, to use its own expression, ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... on their sides, and some leaning negligently against each other; and over the massive centre table were scattered open volumes, old newspapers, and unfinished manuscripts, in most delightful confusion. A half dozen old-fashioned chairs straggled about the floor, as if they did not know exactly what to do with themselves, and a score of old worthies—their faces white as chalk, and their long hair and beards powdered with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... ever stopped to analyze the mental attitude of an employer toward the half dozen, dozen, or score of men who answer his advertisement for the services of one man? He thinks, "Here are a lot of fellows out of jobs. Probably most of them are no good, or they wouldn't be out of jobs. They are ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... a good sample of a large class is not easy. The problem belongs to the science of statistics, and it is a most difficult affair for anyone whose mathematics is primitive, and mine remain azoic in spite of the half dozen manuals which I once devoutly imagined that I understood. All they have done for me is to make me a little more conscious of how hard it is to classify and to sample, how readily we spread a little ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Prairie du Chien—men, women, and children, many of whom had scarcely the fragments of a filthy blanket to hide their nakedness or screen them from the cold—strolling and straggling about in squads of from two to a half dozen each, begging for whiskey, or cold potatoes, or crusts of bread. One old female, doubtless turned of threescore and ten, half naked, was gathering up from the dirt and ashes about the boiler of the steam boat, a few pieces of dried apples that had been dropped and trodden ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... Customary snobbishness had kept him out of the fraternities and college societies. He may have been a good fellow, a fine student, and a cracking end on the eleven, and all that, but he was not acceptable material for any one of the half dozen fraternities. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... down a young man in the entrance way, and left the marks of her high heels on his face. She would have kicked the life out of him while her bully held him down, if a still stronger policeman had not flung her like a mass of offal into a corner. There she is picked up, and, backed by a half dozen of her associates, pushes and strikes promiscuously, and the dense crowd about her push also and strike, and sway here and there, and yell, and hiss, and curse, until the entire police force in the place drag out a score of them, and then ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... he came to a slowly moving line of what to Earthly eyes would have appeared to be conical-nosed, eight-foot projectiles for some giant gun. In slow procession the things moved in single file along a grooved track. A half dozen attendants assisted passengers to enter, or directed these carriers to ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... filling; and while yet the people were streaming in, the minister arose, and after a brief, but exceedingly solemn invocation, gave out the hymn. In an alcove just behind the preacher's stand was a cabinet organ, and some half dozen singers, male and female; but once the singing had got well under way, organ and choir were as though they were not; nearly every one in the house was singing save myself and Mr. Winthrop. I kept silent the more keenly to enjoy the heavy volume of sound which impressed me as more reverent ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... Her morning's work was done and without saying anything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform laboriously sweeping, she went out at the front door of the house and to one of the town stores. There she bought a half dozen books, a geography, an arithmetic, a speller and two or three readers. She had made up her mind to become Hugh McVey's school teacher and with characteristic energy did not put the matter off, but went about it at once. When she got back to her house and saw the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... only college-bred man, stranded more or less like a disabled hull, upon the prairie sea of Colorado. Within the radius of a hundred miles—no great distance as prairie miles are reckoned,—there were known to be some half dozen of the fraternity, putting their superior equipment to the test, opposing trained minds and muscles to the stubborn resistance of an ungenial nature. The varying result of the struggle in different cases would seem to indicate that it is moral fibre which nature respects and submits to, rather ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... grizzled by time. His eyebrows were bushy and overhanging, and almost concealed the small, and twinkling eyes, which it required the beholder to encounter more than once before he could decide their true color to be a dark gray. A blanket coat that had once been white, but which the action of some half dozen winters had changed into a dirty yellow, enveloped his rather full form, around which it was confined by a coarse worsted sash of mingled blue and red, thickly studded with minute white beads. His trowsers, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... the yellow rind from one and a half dozen fresh lemons, very thin, and steep the peelings for forty-eight hours in a gallon of brandy; then add the juice of the lemons, with five quarts of water, three pounds of loaf sugar, and two nutmegs grated; stir it till the sugar is completely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... — N. five, cinque[Fr], quint, quincux[obs3]; six, half-a-dozen, half dozen; seven; eight; nine, three times three; dicker; ten, decade; eleven; twelve, dozen; thirteen; long dozen, baker's dozen; quintuplet; twenty, score; twenty-four, four and twenty, two dozen; twenty- five, five and twenty, quarter of a hundred; forty, two ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... framed the word "three" and his fingers were tightening on the trigger when Carson jumped forward with an oath. He pulled a lever on the wall and the door swung open. Carnes shouted and through the opened door came a half dozen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... feet and pointed out on the pond where, through the smoky gloom, the outlines of the half dozen logs, which Nick and several of his playmates had bound together with withes, when frolicking in ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... the rather attenuated proportions with which we are familiar to-day, stretching from Whitchurch, on the Cheshire border, to Aberystwyth, on the shores of Cardigan Bay, with its two chief subsidiary "sections," one (including some half dozen miles of the original track) from Moat Lane Junction to Brecon, and another from Dovey Junction to Pwllheli; shorter branches or connecting lines from Ellesmere to Wrexham, Oswestry to Llangynog, Llanymynech to Llanfyllin, Abermule to Kerry, Cemmes Road to Dinas Mawddwy, ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... features in this improvement were increased size and enlarged room. L.O. Wilson & Co. took the lead in this by opening a store extending through from Cortlandt to Dey street, whose spacious hall could have swallowed up a half dozen old ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... roving eye discovered the "how come" of Lily's loss of appetite. In a dark corner of the linen closet he saw a dozen fragments of white cloth. He hauled them out, and the light revealed the hems of a covey of sheets and a half dozen pillow cases. Then the web of a home-spun disaster met his eye. From the lower shelf of the linen closet dangled the shredded legs of the trousers which the occupant of Compartment B had given ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... The half dozen lancers, lying on their bellies in the grass on the bank above the road where this discussion took place remained crimson, mute, paralysed with mortification. Was that what the army thought ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... somber eyes he detected a look of mingled suffering and defiance. She knew, somehow or other, that she was conspicuous, grotesque, and her soul was in agony at the knowledge. Before he had spoken a half dozen words to her, Gray realized that this girl was in torture, and that it had required a magnificent courage on her part to meet him as bravely as she did. He was ashamed of himself; amusement at their expense did him no ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... and disconnected sensations then passed through my mind. First I thought there was a great hole in the side of my head, which I tried to fill with small stones. Then my head became full of holes, and finally I fancied that I possessed a half dozen heads and all of them were cut and bleeding. And then apparently all of these heads were suddenly and mysteriously severed from my body, and floated away in space like a lot of toy balloons. Following that, it felt as if every bone in my body ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... had grown up around the railway station,—a place of prosperous ugliness and unabashed modernity,—that you perceived the respectable evidences of what is called in America "an ancient town." The village green, and perhaps a half dozen of the white wooden houses which fronted it with their prim porticoes, were possibly a little more than a hundred years old. The low farmhouse, which showed its gambrel-roof and square brick chimney a few rods down the northern road, was a relic of colonial days. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... beginning of the Christian era to the present day, "Ink" literature, exclusive of its etymology, chemical formulas, and methods of manufacture, has been confined to brief statements in the encyclopedias, which but repeat each other. A half dozen original articles, covering only some particular branch together with a few treatises more general in their ramifications of the subject, can also be found. Seventy lines about "writing ink" covering its history ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... gaze of anguish on the outpost. He dashes ahead, grabs two facing seats and sits in one with a face contorted with anxiety for fear that the others will be too late to join him. As soon as a card game is started there are always a half dozen other men who watch it, following every play with painful scrutiny. It seems that watching other people play cards is the most absorbing amusement known ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... that you obey so quickly," said a man in gaudy costume as he stepped from the bushes followed by a half dozen others, evil looking fellows, all carrying guns and pistols. Ned noticed that two of the guns were rifles of long and slender barrel, undoubtedly of ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... throne. He is descended from Prince Ferdinand, who, dying before his father, Don Alonso X., left his babies exposed to the cruel kindness of their uncle Sancho, who, to save them the troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and transmitted it to his children,—all this some half dozen centuries ago. At every coronation the duke formally protests; an athletic and sinister-looking court headsman comes down to his palace in the Carrera San Geronimo, and by threats of immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paper abdicating his rights to the throne of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... A half dozen eager men made a break for the bar, but Turner's uplifted hand held them. He was an autocrat in ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... clear of the table and drawing her with him). I am surprised at myself, Louka. What would Sergius, the hero of Slivnitza, say if he saw me now? What would Sergius, the apostle of the higher love, say if he saw me now? What would the half dozen Sergiuses who keep popping in and out of this handsome figure of mine say if they caught us here? (Letting go her hand and slipping his arm dexterously round her waist.) Do you consider my ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... the last rememberable words said by me durin' the next quarter of an hour. That shover man let out a hair-raisin' yell, hauled the nickel marlinespike over in its rack, and squeezed a rubber bag that was spliced to the steerin'-wheel. There was a half dozen toots or howls or honks from under our bows somewheres, and then that automobile hopped off the ground and commenced to fly. The fust hop landed me on my knees in the cockpit, and there I stayed. 'Twas the most fittin' position fur my frame ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... despite the unfavorable surroundings she had steadily improved; any woman anywhere would instantly have recognized her as one of those few favored and envied women who know how to get together a toilet. She finally chose the simplest of the half dozen summer dresses she had made for herself—a plain white lawn, with a short skirt. It gave her an appearance of extreme youth, despite her height and the slight stoop in her shoulders—a mere drooping that harmonized touchingly with the young yet weary expression of her face. To go with the dress she ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... and four big three-an'-a-half Bain wagons, two lead an' two trail they be, comes freightin' out of Silver City with their eyes on Wolfville. It's the fourth night out, an' they're camped near a Injun agency. About midnight a half dozen of the bucks comes scoutin' 'round their camp, allowin' to a moral certainty they'll see what's loose an' little enough for 'em to pull. The aborigines makes the error of goin' up the wind from Moon's ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... houses being large, tall, and the walls of decided strength and thickness; but Genoa is even superior in most respects if not in all. I never saw so many churches so admirably constructed and so gorgeously, laboriously ornamented as the half dozen I visited yesterday and this morning. My guide says there are sixty churches in Genoa (a city about the size of Boston, though with fewer houses and a much smaller area than Brooklyn), and that they are nearly all built and adorned with similar if not equal disregard ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... agricultural college, which had come east with a check from the state's leading politician to purchase suitable mural enrichments for the college's new building. Constantine persuaded these worthies that one suitable painting by a distinguished artist would enrich their institution more than the half dozen canvases "to fit the auditorium" which they had been inclined to order. Moreover, he mulcted them of two thousand dollars for Demeter, which, in his private estimation, was more than she was worth. He achieved the sale more readily because of the newspaper controversy ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... the "van" might be, but he replaced the tobacco on the sleigh. In a few moments the task was finished, with the exception of a half dozen other cases, which the driver designated as also for the "van." The horses were unhitched, and stabled in the third of the big log buildings. The driver ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... has grown six inches; he immediately put on his laced hat, girded on his hunting knife and drank two bitters and a half dozen glasses of whisky more than usual; in consequence he has need of a road that's broader than the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... great things; so that showed he was of some use. In fact he was the fire fairy. He kept on, courting all the six sisters, long after May day came, and he lengthened his visits until the heat turned the entire half dozen of them into water. So they ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... tall, high-shouldered man with his spade-shaped beard and ragged smoking jacket, the cotton wool oozing from the quilting and the pockets burst at the corners, had recluse written all over him. He walked over the half dozen rugs that lay between the door and his encampment behind the table and left me forlorn, twiddling my hat and pulling at my coat, somewhere in outer darkness. He was nervous, yet anxious to show he was at ease. ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... use to us in the buggy; just possibly," replied Hal, returning with a half dozen stones, the size of hens' eggs, which he placed on the seat between them. "It's the only form of arms we have, Jack," he whispered, "and we're carrying a heap more money than we could make good ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... minutes to grasp those half dozen lines of writing; and if the letters grew indistinct as he read, he had small cause to be ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... near them a terrible scene unfolded itself to our eyes. There had evidentially been not more than a half dozen of the monsters in the beginning. Two of these were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries where the invisible vibratory beams from the disintegrators had grazed them, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... students at the Conservatory were at least a half dozen who later made names for themselves. They were: Arthur Sullivan, Walter Bache, Franklin Taylor, Edward Dannreuther and J.F. Barnett. All these were making rapid progress in spite of dry methods. So Edward Grieg began to realize that if he would also accomplish ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... smoked a pipe wondrously carved from a block of chalcedony by some "Ancient Arrowmaker" of forgotten fame, and presented to Standish by his admiring friend Hobomok, who, having silently studied at his leisure the half dozen principal men among the Pilgrims, had settled upon Standish as most nearly representing his ideal of combined courage, wisdom, and endurance, so that he already was beginning to be known as "the Captain's Indian," just as Squanto was ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... a boat-steerer, an old sea dog who had sailed oft and again with the skipper, and who had lanced more whales than any other half dozen men aboard. Being in old Tom's watch I grew soon familiar with him; and from the beginning I saw that the old seaman took more than a ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... first ride either Indian had ever had in an automobile, but the quick run back to the city seemed to make no impression upon them. Leaving the taciturn Crees in the baggage car, well supplied with sandwiches, fruit, and a half dozen bottles of ginger ale, the others once more headed for the Zept home. In two hours ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... garden boasts a half dozen species, running from one not more than six inches in height with cinnamon-red flowers to a tall variety with pointed flower spikes, something of the shape of the white flowers of the clethra bush or wands of Culver's root that ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... a half dozen colored members attached to the Elm Street church, at this time. After the congregation was dismissed, these descended from the gallery, and took a seat against the wall most distant from the altar. Brother Bonney was very animated, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... Covent Garden, as Charles said, "dearer to me than any garden of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus." One of the first letters from the new lodgings Lamb whimsically addressed as from "The Garden of England." The half dozen years during which he lived here forms from a literary point of view the most memorable period of Lamb's life. Here he arranged for the publication of the two precious little volumes of his "Works" which were issued in the summer of ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable—and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... retreated, and disregarding the half dozen offered hands, Hazel sprang from her rock and stood out a step or two, shading her eyes and looking down the woodland, where Rollo had disappeared to meet the approaching carriage. The thicket was so close just here that the carriage road though not far off was invisible. Down below Rollo ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner



Words linked to "Half dozen" :   six, 6, cardinal



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