Idiom
twenty to the dozen
Meaning
very fast, fluently
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“She talks twenty to the dozen when she is excited.”
“My sister was so nervous about her interview that she spoke twenty to the dozen the entire time.”
“The auctioneer spoke twenty to the dozen, his rapid-fire delivery keeping the crowd engaged as the prices climbed higher and higher.”
Examples
simple
“She talks twenty to the dozen when she is excited.”
contextual
“My sister was so nervous about her interview that she spoke twenty to the dozen the entire time.”
complex
“The auctioneer spoke twenty to the dozen, his rapid-fire delivery keeping the crowd engaged as the prices climbed higher and higher.”
Origin
The idiom arises from the suggestion of a quantitative imbalance in speech, as if one speaker were producing twenty words for every twelve uttered by their interlocutor. The phrase implies a pace of delivery that is socially inconvenient for those attempting to maintain a balanced conversation.
Key words
Related idioms
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