Word Study
few
CIDE DICTIONARY
few, a. [OE. fewe, feawe, AS. feá, pl. feáwe; akin to OS. fāh, OHG. f fao, Icel. fār, Sw. få, pl., Dan. faa, pl., Goth. faus, L. paucus, cf. Gr. pay^ros. Cf. Paucity.].
Not many; small, limited, or confined in number; -- indicating a small portion of units or individuals constituting a whole; often, by ellipsis of a noun, a few people. Job x. 20. [1913 Webster]
" Few is often used partitively; as, few of them." [1913 Webster]
"Few know and fewer care." [1913 Webster]
OXFORD DICTIONARY
few, adj. & n.
--adj. not many (few doctors smoke; visitors are few).
--n. (as pl.)
1 (prec. by a) some but not many (a few words should be added; a few of his friends were there).
2 a small number, not many (many are called but few are chosen).
3 (prec. by the) a the minority. b the elect.
4 (the Few) colloq. the RAF pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain.
--adj. not many (few doctors smoke; visitors are few).
--n. (as pl.)
1 (prec. by a) some but not many (a few words should be added; a few of his friends were there).
2 a small number, not many (many are called but few are chosen).
3 (prec. by the) a the minority. b the elect.
4 (the Few) colloq. the RAF pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain.
Idiom
every few once in every small group of (every few days). few and far between scarce. a good few colloq. a fairly large number. have a few colloq. take several alcoholic drinks. no fewer than as many as (a specified number). not a few a considerable number. some few some but not at all many.
Derivative
fewness n.
Etymology
OE feawe, feawa f. Gmc
THESAURUS
few
cursory, depthless, footling, handful, hardly any, inconsequential, inconsiderable, insignificant, least, little, littlest, low, lowest, meager, miniature, minim, minimum, negligible, no great shakes, not many, occasional, of small number, petty, picayune, picayunish, precious little, rare, scarce, scarcely any, scattering, seldom, shallow, short, shortest, skin-deep, slightest, small, smallest, smatter, smattering, spatter, spattering, sporadic, sprinkling, superficial, tiny, trifling, trivial, uncommon, unfrequentROGET THESAURUS
few
Smallness
N smallness, littleness, tenuity, paucity, fewness, meanness, insignificance (unimportance), mediocrity, moderation, small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum, vanishing point, material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace, minutiae, details, look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight, whit, tittle, shade, shadow, spark, scintilla, gleam, touch, cast, grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau, screed, smack, tinge, tincture, inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet, flitter, gobbet, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive, snip, snippet, snick, snack, snatch, slip, scrag, chip, chipping, shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair, nutshell, thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful, fragment, fraction, drop in the ocean, animalcule, trifle, mere nothing, next to nothing, hardly anything, just enough to swear by, the shadow of a shade, finiteness, finite quantity, small, little, diminutive, minute, fine, inconsiderable, paltry, faint, slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited, meager, sparing, few, low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes, below par, under par, below the mark, at a low ebb, halfway, moderate, modest, tender, subtle, inappreciable, evanescent, infinitesimal, homeopathic, very small, atomic, corpuscular, microscopic, molecular, subatomic, mere, simple, sheer, stark, bare, near run, dull, petty, shallow, stolid, ungifted, unintelligent, to a small extent, on a small scale, a little bit, a wee bit, slightly, imperceptibly, miserably, wretchedly, insufficiently, imperfectly, faintly, passably, pretty well, well enough, partially, in part, in a certain degree, to a certain degree, to a certain extent, comparatively, some, rather in some degree, in some measure, something, somewhat, simply, only, purely, merely, at least, at the least, at most, at the most, ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu, in ever so small a degree, thus far, pro tanto, within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak, almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but, near upon, close upon, peu s'en faut, near the mark, within an ace of, within an inch of, on the brink of, scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than, about, thereabouts, somewhere about, nearly, say, be the same, be little more or less, no ways, no way, no wise, not at all, not in the least, not a bit, not a bit of it, not a whit, not a jot, not a shadow, in no wise, in no respect, by no means, by no manner of means, on no account, at no hand, dare pondus idonea fumo, magno conatu magnas nugas, small sands the mountain, moments make the year.Fewness
N fewness, paucity, small number, small quantity, rarity, infrequency, handful, maniple, minority, exiguity, reduction, weeding, elimination, sarculation, decimation, eradication, few, scant, scanty, thin, rare, scattered, thinly scattered, spotty, few and far between, exiguous, infrequent, rari nantes, hardly any, scarcely any, to be counted on one's fingers, reduced, unrepeated, rarely, here and there.Infrequency
N infrequency, rareness, rarity, fewness, seldomness, uncommonness, unfrequent, infrequent, rare, rare as a blue diamond, few, scarce, almost unheard of, unprecedented, which has not occurred within the memory of the ol, not within one's previous experience, not since Adam, scarce as hen's teeth, one in a million, few and far between, seldom, rarely, scarcely, hardly, not often, not much, infrequently, unfrequently, unoften, scarcely, scarcely ever, hardly ever, once in a blue moon, once, once in a blue moon, once in a million years, once for all, once in a way, pro hac vice, ein mal kein mal.For further exploring for "few" in Webster Dictionary Online
