The phrase "a dozen before" is not standard in written English and may cause confusion.
It could be used in contexts where you are referring to a quantity of twelve items that were mentioned or occurred prior to a certain point in time.
Example: "We had a dozen before the event started, but now we only have a few left."
Alternatives: "twelve prior" or "twelve earlier".
Black spied handmade wooden necklaces, trying on a dozen before deciding that lunch was a more pressing pursuit — so we headed off to Joloff, the couple's favorite Senegalese restaurant, for a meal of a peanut curry dish, known as mafe, with joloff, a signature West African rice stewed in tomatoes and spices.
Facing Michigan, the nation's No. 1 team, the Princeton star scored 41 points and had his team up by a dozen before he fouled out with 4 minutes and 37 seconds left.
She called about a dozen before she found one that agreed to meet the family, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The soldiers are trying to root out small teams of enemy fighters who have already killed three American soldiers and wounded more than a dozen before fading back in the city.
MOSCOW — Heavily armed gunmen burst into the Parliament building of Chechnya, in southern Russia, on Tuesday morning, killing at least three people and wounding more than a dozen before the assailants were killed by police officers or by their own explosives, officials said.
A1 Israeli Deserter Kills 4 An Israeli Army deserter dressed in a military uniform opened fire aboard a bus carrying Israeli Arabs, killing four and wounding at least a dozen before an angry crowd beat the gunman to death, Israeli authorities and witnesses said.
But it claims that it will increase that number to a few dozen before long, and later to hundreds.
Given the time and space that the likes of Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskas were allowed by Eintracht's defenders, Lionel Messi would have scored half-a-dozen before half-time.
The morning that Elizabeth Taylor died, Phyllis Shelton received nearly half a dozen calls before noon.
Everything said seems like a quotation from something they've all seen a dozen times before and half forgotten.
First, he talked about succession, saying what he has said a dozen times before, but that in itself is revealing.
