before deductions, e.g. gross domestic or national product, or gross profit or income . In this sense, it may appear, separated by a comma, following the noun it modifies, e.g., "earned two million dollars, gross". Compare: net;
flagrant, in criminal law or in tort law, e.g. gross indecency or gross negligence;
count of 144, in commercial contexts implying quantity of items (= 12 × 12; a dozen dozen). Though often said to mean simply "144", it is subject to usage rules different from those for numbers:
when the preceding word is a number, it often implies multiplication rather than combining that number of separate counts, e.g. "two gross" can refer equally to a single container into which 288 items were counted, or to a pair of containers into each of which 144 were counted
normally (i.e., outside situations justifying extreme brevity), specifying the kind of objects being counted may not be done by positioning the kind directly following "gross", but requires that the word "of" intervene, e.g. "288 apples", but "two gross of apples"
can also mean "disgusting." For example, "That was a gross picture."
