Author Topic: Duodene ?  (Read 2217 times)

Binkie

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Duodene ?
« on: August 15, 2008, 06:35:19 PM »

How about " duodene " ?  The Free Dictionary defines it as  "a group of twelve; a dozen."

Alan W

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Re: Duodene ?
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2008, 12:00:07 PM »
I think not, Binks.

The Free Dictionary definition comes from the Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms. The only other place I could see it was Wiktionary, which gives two meanings:

  • (music) A schematic group of twelve notes
  • (rare) A group of twelve

A quotation is given to illustrate the second meaning: "He saw where the beer was, crated duodenes of it stacked between counter and wall, and went to help himself." This is from Honey for the Bears by Anthony Burgess. This is a pretty fancy word for a dozen bottles of beer! In fact, the word in general seems to be just a more obscure way of saying "dozen", which might explain why it is rare.

I found another example, from James Joyce's Ulysses: "A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands." This could conceivably be using either, or both, of the word's meanings.

[Big digression: The musical sense of duodene was coined by a scholar named Alexander J. Ellis, whose main interest was language. His work on phonetics and advocacy of English spelling reform were admired by Bernard Shaw. The Wikipedia article on Ellis claims he was the original for Henry Higgins, but I couldn't find confirmation of this in any other source.]

Apart from the two quotes given above, the word doesn't seem to have been used to any degree in the past hundred years. Joyce and Burgess are highly-regarded authors, but also both famous for their playful use of language, so I don't think they can be taken as a guide to words that are in normal usage.

So, sorry Binkie, but I deem duodene to be too obscure.

[Another digression: In case you were wondering if there's any connection to duodenum, the words both derive from the Latin for twelve, the relevance to the digestive organ being that an early anatomist felt it was about twelve fingers' width in size.]
Alan Walker
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