It is central to many systems of timekeeping, including theWestern calendar andunits of time of day, and frequently appears in the world's major religions.
Twelve is the largest number with asingle-syllable name inEnglish. EarlyGermanic numbers have been theorized to have been non-decimal: evidence includes the unusual phrasing ofeleven and twelve, theformer use of "hundred" to refer to groups of120, and the presence of glosses such as "tentywise" or "ten-count" in medieval texts showing that writers could not presume their readers would normally understand them that way.[3][4][5] Such uses gradually disappeared with the introduction ofArabic numerals during the12th-century Renaissance.
Derived fromOld English,twelf andtuelf are first attested in the 10th-centuryLindisfarne Gospels'Book of John.[note 1][7] It has cognates in everyGermanic language (e.g. Germanzwölf), whoseProto-Germanic ancestor has beenreconstructed as*twaliƀi..., from*twa ("two") and suffix*-lif- or*-liƀ- of uncertain meaning.[7] It is sometimes compared with theLithuaniandvýlika, although-lika is used as the suffix for all numbers from 11 to 19 (analogous to "-teen").[7] Every otherIndo-European language instead uses a form of "two"+"ten", such as theLatinduōdecim.[7] The usualordinal form is "twelfth" but "dozenth" or "duodecimal" (from the Latin word) is also used in some contexts, particularlybase-12 numeration. Similarly, a group of twelve things is usually a "dozen" but may also be referred to as a "dodecad" or "duodecad". The adjective referring to a group of twelve is "duodecuple".
As with eleven,[8] the earliest forms of twelve are often considered to be connected with Proto-Germanic*liƀan or*liƀan ("to leave"), with the implicit meaning that "two is left" after having already counted to ten.[7] The Lithuanian suffix is also considered to share a similar development.[7] The suffix*-lif- has also been connected with reconstructions of the Proto-Germanic for ten.[8][9]
As mentioned above, 12 has its own name in Germanic languages such as English (dozen), Dutch (dozijn), German (Dutzend), and Swedish (dussin), all derived from Old Frenchdozaine. It is a compound number in many other languages, e.g. Italiandodici (but in Spanish and Portuguese, 16, and in French, 17 is the first compound number),[dubious –discuss] Japanese 十二jūni.[clarification needed]
In prose writing,twelve, being the last single-syllable numeral, is sometimes taken as the last number to be written as a word, and13 the first to be written using digits.This is not a binding rule, and in English language tradition, it is sometimes recommended to spell out numbers up to and including eithernine,ten ortwelve, or evenninety-nine orone hundred. Another system spells out all numbers written in one or two words (sixteen,twenty-seven,fifteen thousand, but372 or15,001).[10]InGerman orthography, there used to be the widely followed (but unofficial) rule of spelling out numbers up to twelve (zwölf). TheDuden[year needed] (the German standard dictionary) mentions this rule as outdated.
The cubic close packing and hexagonal close packing, which are the two densest possiblesphere packings in three-dimensional space (theKepler conjecture, proved byThomas Hales), both have each sphere touching twelve other spheres. Twelve is also thekissing number in three dimensions.
Twelve is the smallest weight for which acusp form exists. This cusp form is the discriminant whose Fourier coefficients are given by theRamanujan-function and which is (up to a constant multiplier) the 24th power of theDedekind eta function:
The number twelve carries religious, mythological and magicalsymbolism; since antiquity, the number has generally represented perfection, entirety, or cosmic order.[19]
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The number 12 is notable within theHebrew Bible, and in Christianity:
TheBook of Revelation contains much numerical symbolism, and many of the numbers mentioned have 12 as a divisor.12:1 mentions a woman—interpreted as thepeople of Israel, theChurch and theVirgin Mary—wearing a crown of twelve stars (representing each of the twelve tribes of Israel). Furthermore, there are 12,000 people sealed from each of the twelve tribes of Israel (theTribe of Dan is omitted whileManasseh is mentioned), making a total of144,000 (which is the square of 12 multiplied by a thousand).
Thehadith of the twelve successors is a widely reported prophecy, attributed to Prophet Muhammad, predicting that there would be twelve successors after him.[22][23]
The Chinese use a 12-year cycle for time-reckoning calledEarthly Branches.
There are twelvehours in a half day, numbered one to twelve for both theante meridiem (a.m.) and thepost meridiem (p.m.). 12:00 p.m. is midday ornoon, and 12:00 a.m. ismidnight.
The basic units of time (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours) are evenly divisible by twelve into smaller units.
Inrugby league, one of the starting second-row forwards wears the number 12 jersey in most competitions. An exception is in theSuper League, which uses static squad numbering.
Inrugby union, one of the starting centres, most often but not always the inside centre, wears the 12 shirt.
Twelve is the number ofpitch classes in anoctave, not counting the duplicated (octave) pitch. Also, the total number ofmajor keys, (not countingenharmonic equivalents) and the total number ofminor keys (also not counting equivalents). This applies only to twelve toneequal temperament, the most common tuning used today in western influenced music.
The twelfth is theinterval of an octave and a fifth. Instruments such as theclarinet which behave as a stopped cylindrical pipeoverblow at the twelfth.
There are twelve basichues in thecolor wheel: three primary colors (red, yellow, blue), three secondary colors (orange, green, purple) and six tertiary colors (names for these vary, but are intermediates between the primaries and secondaries).
^Gordon, E. V. (1957).Introduction to Old Norse. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. pp. 292–293. Archived fromthe original on 2016-04-15. Retrieved2017-09-08.
^Stevenson, W. H. (December 1899). "The Long Hundred and its Use in England".Archaeological Review.4 (5):313–317.
^"And it is thought that there is a special significance in the number twelve. It was typified, we know, by many things in the Old Testament; by the twelve sons of Jacob, by the twelve princes of the children of Israel, by the twelve fountains in Elim, by the twelve stones in Aaron's breast-plate, by the twelve loaves of the shew-bread, by the twelve spies sent by Moses, by the twelve stones of which the altar was made, by the twelve stones taken out of Jordan, by the twelve oxen which bare"P. Young,Daily readings for a year (1863),p. 150.
^Olsson, Tord; Ozdalga, Elisabeth; Raudvere, Catharina (2005).Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives. Routledge.ISBN978-1-135-79725-6.
^Hussain, J.M. (1982).Occultation of the Twelfth Imam: A Historical Background. Muhammadi Trust.ISBN9780710301581.
Collins, Billie Jean (2002), "Necromancy, Fertility and the Dark Earth: The Use of Ritual Pits in Hittite Cult", in Mirecki, Paul; Meyer, Marvin (eds.),Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, pp. 224–233,ISBN90-04-10406-2
