1152. This week, we look at what a baker's dozen is and why it's actually 13. We also look at other "dozen" phrases, like "devil's dozen" and "banker's dozen." Finally, we tackle the inconsistency of making words that end in O plural, from "tomatoes" to "rodeos."
1152. This week, we look at what a baker's dozen is and why it's actually 13. We also look at other "dozen" phrases, like "devil's dozen" and "banker's dozen." Finally, we tackle the inconsistency of making words that end in O plural, from "tomatoes" to "rodeos."
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about why we use the phrase "baker's dozen" and how to make words that end in O plural.
by Mignon Fogarty
I recently encountered the phrase "baker's dozen" and wondered where it came from.
Well, first, a dozen is 12, and the word goes back to Latin "duodecim," which was formed from the words for "two" and "ten," so it also meant 12.
But a baker's dozen is 13. So what's going on? Were old-time bakers so generous that they threw in an extra roll so often that if you bought 12 rolls, you'd always get 13?
Well, not exactly. You might get an extra loaf, but not because of generosity.
In medieval England, bread was a staple food, and bakers were subject to strict laws about price and weight. For example, a law called the Assize of Bread and Ale Act set standards for the weight and quality of both bread and ale. It was actually the very first British statute that regulated the sale of food. And bakers who sold underweight loaves faced harsh penalties, including fines, flogging, and even time in a pillory.
Different kinds of bread, like whole wheat bread versus a finer bread called wastel, had different standard weights, and the price of a loaf also fluctuated with the price of wheat. But since the weight of bread can also vary due to things like moisture loss during baking and cooling, bakers may have sometimes added an extra loaf when they sold them by the dozen so they wouldn't accidentally short-change customers and risk punishment.
The practice was especially common when bakers sold to middlemen who would resell the bread. In this case, the 13th loaf also gave these intermediaries a profit margin.
The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for "baker's dozen" is from 1596, and the more literal "thirteen to a dozen" shows up in print around the same time, but the practice itself is believed to be older.
The phrase "devil's dozen" for 13 also exists, and Anatoly Liberman, writing for the Oxford University Press blog, says it could be because bakers had bad reputations and people referred to them as devils. But interestingly, Liberman says that "Some Germanic and Romance languages have no special name for 'thirteen,' while others have. When such a name exists, the reference is always to things gone wrong or some devilry." So he seems to favor the general idea of the number 13 being tied to the devil and leading to 13 of something being referred to as a devil's dozen.
Thirteen can also be called a "long dozen," a term that arose in the early 1800s, and a "printer's dozen," which comes from printers giving 13 copies for every 12 ordered, perhaps to provide an allowance for mistakes, damage, or quality checks.
Moving beyond 13, another interesting "dozen" phrase is "nineteen to the dozen." According to the World Wide Words blog, this one emerged in the 1700s and is used to describe something fast, like fast talking or a dog wagging its tail quickly. As in "this person or dog is cramming more than a normal amount of something into a dozen." A Google Ngram search shows that it's more common in British English, and here's a fun example from a 2015 article by Lucy Davis describing the Irish photographer Gareth McConnell:
"He’s much like this in conversation: frequently self-deprecating, easy-going, often cheeky. He also talks nineteen to the dozen, weaving punk bands, AK-47s, Tommy Hilfiger, Susan Sontag and Carl Cox into his conversation as easily as his publishing venture (Sorika), his daughter, and his long-time battle with drug addiction. At the end of it all, I find myself wondering what on earth just happened."
Nineteen seems to be the traditional amount used in the saying, but World Wide Words reports seeing other numbers used too.
Next, you may have heard of 11 referred to as a banker's dozen. This is a more modern casual or joking phrase that arose in the late 1800s that plays on the stereotype of stingy bankers shortchanging customers, prioritizing their own interests, or just taking out a lot of fees so you end up with less money than you expected. It fits in with the saying that people work "banker's hours" when they don't work as long as other office workers.
Finally, we have the daily dozen. This started as a workout routine with 12 calisthenic exercises invented in 1919 by a Yale University football coach named Walter Camp while he was an advisor to the U.S. military during World War I.
Then, during the 1920s, he promoted his exercises on the radio, and eventually, "daily dozen" could be used to refer to anyone's exercise regimen whether it used Camp's 12 exercises or not.
And the meaning broadened even further over time, so now, it doesn't even have to refer to exercise. It can refer to any set of routine duties or tasks.
The term was also used by Dr. Michael Greger in his book "How Not to Die" as the title for a list of 12 foods — such as beans, berries, whole grains, and so on — that he recommends eating for optimum health. So that might be the way you've heard "the daily dozen" used today. But it got its start as a specific circuit of exercises long ago.
Sources
"Assize of Bread and Ale." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale (accessed January 5, 2026)
"banker's dozen" Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/banker%27s_dozen (accessed January 5, 2026)
Camp, W. "Keeping Fit All the Way." 1919 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13574/13574-h/13574-h.htm#Part_II (accessed January 6, 2026)
"Daily dozen." Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daily%20dozen (accessed January 5, 2026)
"Devilish Words." Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/devilish-words (accessed January 5, 2026)
"dozen n." Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/dozen_n?tab=meaning_and_use#6217610 (accessed January 5, 2026)
"Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen." NutritionFacts.org. https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen/ (accessed January 5, 2026)
Liberman, A. “'The devil to pay' and more devilry." OUPblog. https://blog.oup.com/2020/05/the-devil-to-pay-and-more-devilry/ (accessed January 5, 2026)
Liberman, A. "A 'baker’s dozen' and some idioms about food." OUPblog. https://blog.oup.com/2020/10/a-bakers-dozen-and-some-idioms-about-food/ (accessed January 5, 2026)
"pull devil, pull baker.' Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/pull_v?tab=meaning_and_use#27825535 (accessed January 5, 2026)
Quinion, M. "Nineteen to the dozen." https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nin2.htm (accessed January 5, 2026)
by Natalie Schilling
English spelling can be a challenge, to put it mildly. There are lots of rules, like “i” before “e” except after “c,” but they all have exceptions. The words “weird” and “eight” have “e” before “i,” and words like “science” and “species” have “i” before “e” even though they come after “c.”
Another case where the exceptions seem to outweigh the rule has to do with how to spell the plural forms of nouns ending in “o”; for some of them, like “radio,” you add “s”; for others, like “tomato,” you add “e-s.” According to Merriam-Webster, the official rule is that you add “s” when the root word ends in a vowel plus “o,” as in “radio,” “ratio,” and “rodeo”; and you add an "e-s" if the word ends in a consonant + “o,” like “tomato” or “potato.” That sounds great, but you can quickly come up with exceptions: for example, “photos” ends in a consonant, “t,” plus “o” like "tomato," but it takes an “s” plural, not “e-s.”
Some people have suggested that the exceptions to the “add -e-s” rule, like “photos,” are all shortened forms of longer words. This works to an extent; “photos” is short for “photographs,” “combos” is short for “combinations,” and the word “rhinos” refers to more than one “rhinoceros.” But there are also words ending in consonant plus “o” that take “s” rather than “e-s” plurals that aren’t short for anything, for example “solo” or “piano,” although “piano” actually did used to be an abbreviated form of the now obsolete word “pianoforte.”
Others have said that, well, maybe when the word ending in “o” is related to music it takes an “s” rather than “e-s” plural. That covers “solo” and “piano,” unless we’re talking about solo flights across the Atlantic. But what about “banjo,” which, unfortunately for those of us trying to figure out spelling rules, can take EITHER an “s” or “es” plural. And it’s not the only word ending in “o” that can go either way. There’s also “zeroes,” “cargoes,” “haloes,” “tornadoes,” and “torpedoes,” all of which can be written with either an “s” and “e-s” ending.
Still others weighing in on the “s” vs. “e-s” plural rule have suggested that maybe the words ending in consonant plus “o” that take “s” rather than “e-s” plurals all come from non-English sources. That explains “piano,” which comes from Italian, and “rodeo,” which comes from Spanish, and also the “s” plural on “espressos,” “tacos,” and “kimonos.”
But languages are always borrowing from each other, and it’s hard to draw the line between what counts as an English word and what counts as a borrowing. Technically speaking, “tomato” and “potato” were borrowed into English from Spanish, which in turn borrowed the words from the languages of Indigenous peoples who first introduced the words, and the foods themselves, to Europeans.
If there ever were a rule governing which words ending in “o” take which type of plural, that rule has been broken so many times and so many exceptions have been carved out that it looks like we’re just going to have to rely on our memories to figure out which words take “s” and which take “e-s” – and which can take either, depending on your preference.
I’m not sure if it’s helpful or hurtful that in addition to the complexities of English spelling rules there are cases where it seems like anything goes: who cares if you spell “banjos” with “s” or “e-s”– or for that matter “ketchup” as “k-e-t-c-h-u-p” or “c-a-t-s-u-p”? They’re all just alternate spellings.
And this isn't a new problem. Spellings have been difficult, and inconsistent, in English for a long time; even proper names like “Shakespeare” used to be able to be spelled any way people wanted to, including one way on one occasion and another way on a different document. Samuel Johnson attempted to standardize things with his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, but of course not everyone read or obeyed the dictionary’s dictates. And then Noah Webster went and complicated things even further with his American Dictionary of the English Language, where he introduced a series of simplified spellings to differentiate American English from British standards. But again, not everyone followed the rules, and there wasn’t always a prescribed standard for every situation.
There are still a surprising number of words with two correct spellings, not even counting the many spelling differences between American English and British English, like "tire" spelled “t-i-r-e” vs. “t-y-r-e” or “theater” with an “e-r” vs. “r-e” ending. Sometimes the confusion makes me want to just take an “axe” to the whole system – but is that “a-x,” or “a-x-e,” or either one?
When it comes to the plurals of words that end in "o," all we can say is there are some general guidelines, like add "e-s" if there's a consonant before the "o"; but when in doubt, check a dictionary.
That segment was written by Natalie Schilling, a professor emerita of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and who runs a forensic linguistics consulting firm. You can find her on LinkedIn.
Finally, I have a familect story from Kent:
So one that we have in my family is "George, we're in the wrong pew." That's because one time we were on an Amtrak cross-country trip, and this couple was trying to find their seats, and they got in, and they looked at their tickets, and the woman said "George, we're in the wrong pew." My family overheard that, someone did, and that became a phrase for whenever something just wasn't in the right place. "George, we're in the wrong pew." Anyway, this is Kent, and this is my familect.
Thanks, Kent. It's funny how just a short thing you overhear can strike people as so funny or interesting that they use it for the rest of their lives. I'm sure that couple has no idea they inspired your familect! Thanks for the call.
Finally, thanks to all our Grammarpaloozians old — and new over on Patreon. Your support is a huge help, and I love making all the little extras you get each week. If you want to join us, visit Patreon.com/grammargirl.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Rebekah Sebastian, Nat Hoopes, Morgan Christianson, Dan Feierabend, and Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts, who wants to take a ceramics class.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.
That's all. Thanks for listening.