Etymologically
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few

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /fjuː/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fewe,[2][3][4] inherited from Old English fēawe, fēawa, contracted fēa,[2][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *fawaz,[7][6] from Proto-Indo-European *pau- (“few, little”).[7][8][6] Its Germanic cognates include Old Frisian fē (“little”), Old Saxon fā, Old High German fao, Old Norse fár (“little; taciturn”) and Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐍅𐌰𐌹 (fawai, “few”) (plural);[2][4][5] outside Germanic it is related to Latin paucus (“few, little”), pauper (“poor”) and puer (“child”), Ancient Greek παῦρος (paûros, “small, little”) and Ancient Greek παῖς (paîs, “child”), and Sanskrit पुत्र (putrá, “son, child”).[9][4][10] Klein lists many English words from the same root, among them foal, paucity, poor, pupil and puerile.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Not many, a small number (Old English, about 725, in Beowulf; also predicatively, 825).[9][11]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the word was always plural, according to the OED on the analogy of the adverb fela “many”, and could also mean “seldom” or “even a little”.[7] The noun “a small number of persons”, contrasted with the many, dates from about 1175 in Barnhart (about 1300 in Etymonline).[2][7] The phrase few and far between is attested from the 1660s.[7] The ironic a good few “a good many”, which Samuel Pegge in 1803 attributed to northern dialect, and quite a few (1854) mean “many”.[7] Jocular a few as an adverb, “a little”, as in “astonish the natives a few”, was common in 18th- and 19th-century slang, especially American;[12][13] Weekley suggests it may imitate French un peu.[13] A few for “several drinks” dates from about 1900.[12][14] The Few, the RAF pilots of the Battle of Britain, comes from Churchill's speech of August 1940: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”[15][16][17]

Timeline

  • c. 725 – Old English fēa, fēawe, in Beowulf.[9]
  • c. 1150 – fewe.[2]
  • c. 1175 – as a noun, a small number.[2]
  • 1549 – the few, the minority.[11]
  • 1660s – few and far between.[7]
  • 1763 – a few, a good deal (slang).[12]
  • 1803 – a good few.[7]
  • 1854 – quite a few.[7]
  • c. 1900 – a few, several drinks.[12]
  • 1940 – the Few, pilots of the Battle of Britain.[15][16]

Modern meaning

Determiner

  1. Not many; hardly any: few men are so cruel.
  2. (a few) A small number of: a few drinks.

Pronoun

  1. Not many persons or things: many are called but few are chosen.
  2. (a few) A small number of people or things.

Noun

  1. (the few) A select minority: the fortunate few.
  2. (the Few, Britain) The RAF pilots of the Battle of Britain.
  3. (informal, a few) Several alcoholic drinks.

Word family

  • fewness
  • overfew
  • paucity
  • poor
  • pauper
  • foal
  • pupil
  • puerile
  • poultry
  • pony

Usage notes

The traditional rule uses fewer with things that can be counted (fewer than four players) and less with mass nouns (less paper); the American Heritage Dictionary notes, however, that less is idiomatic before plural nouns of time, amount or distance (less than three weeks, less than $400) and in no less than and or less.[3] Quite a few and a good few, despite their form, mean “a fairly large number”.[17][18]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  9. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  10. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  11. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  14. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
  15. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  16. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  17. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  18. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House