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There's also a 'Baker's Dozen' which is actually thirteen instead of twelve. Possibly long ago a baker could be punished if they sold a dozen loaves of bread that were underweight. So they threw in one extra loaf just to be safe.

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Thanks Oxx, that makes sense. I had to read it a few times to wrap my brain around it. As for Roel's comment that dozen is a trade unit, that may explain why some items can be quantified by 'dozen' and others cannot. As the Thai man explained, packets of sugar cannot be labeled dozen, but boxes of sugar can. I suppose because in trade, sugar is not normally sold/bought by the packet. It is traded by the box. In English we could say, "I have a 'dozen' boxes, with a 'dozen' packets of sugar in each one". In Thai you would say, "I have a 'dozen' boxes, with 'twelve' packets of sugar in each one". Same for cigarettes I would imagine. Not sold individually so you wouldn't have a dozen cigarettes. But you could have a dozen packs or cartons of cigarettes.

Interesting and informative, Roel, thanks. In English sometimes we use the word dozen when it isn't actually twelve, but to mean close to that number or many times. So I said I had been to Brazil 'about' a dozen times. To me that's anywhere from 10-15 times. People might say to each other, "I must have told you a dozen times...", just to emphasis they have been told multiple times, but in reality probably no where near an actual dozen.

While having a conversation in Thai, a local asked me how many times I had been to Brazil. Wanting to give an approximate answer, I said I had been there about a dozen times. That answer produced a long belly-laugh. He explained that, in Thai, you cannot use the word dozen (โหล) to indicate the number of times something has occurred. You can say 'twelve times' or 'many times', but not a 'dozen times'. Indeed, when I type into Google Translate: "A dozen times", it comes back as: หลายสิบครั้ง. But when I enter "A half dozen times" it translates it exactly as ครึ่งโหลครั้ง. I checked with another Thai person that also said 'dozen' cannot be used with the number of times something occurred. To confuse me even more, he explained it can be used with certain objects, like a dozen bottles (ขวดโหล), a dozen eggs (ไข่โหล), but cannot be used with other objects. His example was that you cannot say, 'A dozen packets of sugar'. But GT doesn't agree and does translate it as น้ำตาลหนึ่งโหล. He must have given me a dozen examples and explained it a dozen times, but I was still confused. I would be interested in some rules or explanations about when/why the word 'dozen' can or cannot be used in the Thai language. Thank you a dozen times over.

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